<div>Dear Sameer,</div>
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<div>Iam glad to learn about your interest in our educational project.</div>
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<div>I'll soon post more about OLPC-India Foundation, and getting involved in it. We are in the process of structuring the different interest groups, who wish to be a part of our vision in India.</div>
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<div>>Given that the Indian government has said no to the OLPC effort, I wonder of there are ways to still pursue this. In a sense, I have access > to a village, and I want to help.<br> </div>
<div>First, it is a misconception that Indian Government as a whole, did'nt show interest in our project. There were certain Ministers( especially one, whose name I'll leave unmentioned), who became critical about our project, and its vision. Second, as long as people are interested in our vision, which is definitely true in case of India, finding ways is not a problem. Infact, the ways have already been figured out, and we are making headway in the right direction. Third, we have support from big corporations, and Ministers in Indian Government too.
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<div>Finally, I see the target audience i.e. children, being greatly benefited from implementing OLPC in India. I happen to visit Khairat School in Navi Mumbai recently, where we have conducted our first pilot in India. It is a rural school in every aspect, except children who lack opportunity, not capability. I could see the difference in the approach children learn learning, while interacting with the XOs( our low-cost, high-performance laptops), and the big way in which our educational tool can help them to make a better and a peaceful world, in which we all live and interact amongst each other. World needs to be fulfiled, and not conquered is the message we are trying to put across through every aspect of XO: starting from open-source software to mesh-network scheme, which motivates the idea of "sharing".
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<div>I wish if we kindly forget the one-time event of OLPC's rejection by certain HRD Ministers in India that has unfortunately happened in the past.</div>
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<div>Regards,</div>
<div>Manu</div>
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<div>Manusheel Gupta</div>
<div>Technical Consultant/Advisor</div>
<div>One Laptop Per Child Inc.</div>
<div><a href="http://laptop.org">http://laptop.org</a> </div>
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<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/15/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Sameer Verma</b> <<a href="mailto:sverma@sfsu.edu">sverma@sfsu.edu</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Joshua N Pritikin wrote:<br>> "The formation of OLPC-India Foundation has been engineered, which<br>
> comprises of corporate partners, non-profit organizations, Education<br>> Ministers at State Level, bureaucrats, and most importantly: interested<br>> volunteers."<br>><br>> "OLPC-India pilot project is going to start during the end week of this
<br>> month(September'07)!"<br>><br>> My wife and I own a small school (200 kids) in Nashik, Maharashtra. We<br>> are very eager to implement OLPC. How do we join the foundation? Can we<br>> get involved in a pilot?
<br>> _______________________________________________<br>> India mailing list<br>> <a href="mailto:India@lists.laptop.org">India@lists.laptop.org</a><br>> <a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
</a><br>><br><br>I would like to know more about the foundation project as well. I have<br>two specific interests:<br><br>1) My research interests are in the direction of sustainable information<br>systems as a whole, and OLPC implementations are of great interest.
<br><br>2) A part of my family comes from Bhagmalpur, a small village in<br>northern India (Dist. Jaunpur, UP). This village has about 40 families.<br>Our family started the local school (now managed by the state<br>government). We have been pioneers in bringing education in some mode to
<br>the village. The village is on the electrical grid, but may see about<br>two hours worth of power in a 24 hour period. The Internet has not<br>reached this village as yet. Long term, I would like to see this village<br>
benefit from projects such as OLPC. Given that the Indian government has<br>said no to the OLPC effort, I wonder of there are ways to still pursue<br>this. In a sense, I have access to a village, and I want to help.<br><br>
cheers,<br>Sameer<br><br>--<br>Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.<br>Associate Professor of Information Systems<br>San Francisco State University<br>San Francisco CA 94132 USA<br><a href="http://verma.sfsu.edu/">http://verma.sfsu.edu/
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