“It's an education project, not a laptop project.”
— Nicholas Negroponte
Any nation's most precious natural resource is its children. Yet most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade.
The individual and societal consequences of this chronic global crisis are profound. Children are consigned to poverty and isolation – just like their parents – never knowing what the light of learning could mean in their lives. Given the resources that developing countries can reasonably allocate to education – sometimes less than $20 per year per pupil, compared to the $8700 per pupil spent annually in the U.S. – this remains a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
The One Laptop Per Child (“OLPC”) initiative is rethinking the solution.
Started by MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC was founded to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves through the development, production and distribution of low-cost, durable laptops.
OLPC is not, at heart, a technology organization. OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end – an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community.
To learn more about the organization and how you can help, head to www.laptop.org.
— Nicholas Negroponte
Any nation's most precious natural resource is its children. Yet most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade.
The individual and societal consequences of this chronic global crisis are profound. Children are consigned to poverty and isolation – just like their parents – never knowing what the light of learning could mean in their lives. Given the resources that developing countries can reasonably allocate to education – sometimes less than $20 per year per pupil, compared to the $8700 per pupil spent annually in the U.S. – this remains a seemingly insurmountable challenge.
The One Laptop Per Child (“OLPC”) initiative is rethinking the solution.
Started by MIT Media Lab director Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC was founded to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves through the development, production and distribution of low-cost, durable laptops.
OLPC is not, at heart, a technology organization. OLPC is a non-profit organization providing a means to an end – an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap into their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community.
To learn more about the organization and how you can help, head to www.laptop.org.