[OLPC India] Disappointed in the progress being made in India

[Uma Gupta]

Dear Manu,

You may recall that my sister, Usha, (who is well-versed with NGOs in India
with special emphasis on rural India )and I (Senior Advisor to the Provost
at State University of New York) are interested in the laptop project in
India. I contacted you earlier inquiring how to engage with you on this
project.

We are disappointed at the level of discussions and engagement taking place
on the digest and elsewhere for volunteers like us who want to help move
this initiative forward. Like Nicholas, we are interested in making a
difference. We have no other hidden agendas.

When we first heard about this project, we were excited beyond measure. We
have contacts in rural India and are aware of the challenges and issues in
penetrating these markets. I am sure you will agree that India is
bureaucratic to begin with and we don't need more bureaucracy.

We feel we are not getting direct answers to our queries as to how to truly
engage rural communities in this important initiative. While fonts and
technical glitches and multiple language programs are important, your
volunteers should first know about your penetration plans and how they can
help. Creating more digests or wikipedia is not the solution to keeping
volunteers excited and engaged because talk is cheap!

So - bottom line - we want to help fulfill the vision of NN. We want action,
not more discussions. Otherwise you will wear down the enthusiasm of your
volunteers and they will look elsewhere.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Usha Gowri
Uma Gupta


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arjun Sarwal <arjun at laptop.org>
Date: Oct 25, 2007 8:00 PM
Subject: Re: [OLPC India] India
To: Usha Gowri <usha.gowri at gmail.com>
Cc: manu at laptop.org, Carla Gomez Monroy < carla at laptop.org>, Nia Lewis <
nia at laptop.org>, india at laptop.org, "Prof. Nicholas Negroponte" < nn at mit.edu>,
Matt Keller <Matt.Keller at wfp.org>, olpc-india at laptop.org

Dear Ms Gowri,

We appreciate your concern with regard to people just looking for
information as to when and how; to have to look through a lot of technical
posts on the mailing list.

We are in the process of developing a database and mechanisms on the wiki to
co-ordinate efforts of organizations/people wanting to get involved with
OLPC in India.

You might also want to have a look at the 'Give Many' program (part of the
G1G1) starting in November., which allows you to buy 100+/1000+/10000+
laptops
http://laptopfoundation.org/participate/givemany.shtml


Also, I'd recommend all related queries to also be copied to
olpc-india at laptop.org which is the email id for the OLPC- India foundation,
which would be spearheading distribution efforts in India.


Thank you for your interest.

Regards,
Arjun
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/india/attachments/20071026/71a99970/attachment-0001.htm