Have an extra One Laptop Per Child laptop you are not using? Donate it to Haiti!

I got an interesting email just now from Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the One Laptop Per Child project. I've pasted it below - if you have any extra XO laptops lying around and no longer need them, you may want to donate them to be used in child education projects in Haiti.

Personally, I am a little ambivalent about the offer - in it he seems to reinforce the idea that the laptops are not as useful as we all had hoped but that they are still useful for use by children in poor countries.

My children still use their XOs and I am still committed to them and their nifty child-oriented (but ironically named) Sugar operating system. The devices, which we bought in 2007 when they first became available through a "give one get one" scheme, are now outdated and slow compared to other laptops we use as a family, and one of them has a weird keyboard issue so we have to use it with an external keyboard.

Given how small laptops have become readily available at fairly low prices, I am glad to see that Sugar now appears to be available for download and use on any PC like other open source operating systems like Ubuntu Linux. I'll be checking it out when I have some spare time - let me know if you do the same and we can help each other. You can go to http://www.sugarlabs.org to download a copy of Sugar or otherwise get involved in what looks like a great volunteer-led project. 

Dear G1G1er, 
At the end of 2007 you participated in the Give One Get One program of One Laptop per Child (OLPC). Thanks to you and others like you, 75,000 laptops went to Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Cambodia, Oceania, the West Bank, and Haiti. 

An additional 75,000 laptops came into the USA as part of the "get" side of the equation. In some cases those laptops have since been put into closets for one reason or another. 

We are gathering additional used XO laptops to send to Haiti. If you or the child to whom you gave the laptop is no longer using it, we appeal again to your generosity and ask you to send it to the address below (even if it is broken). 

OLPC FOR HAITI c/o Exel 
615 Westport Parkway # 500 
Grapevine, TX 76051 

75% of the schools in Port-au-Prince have been destroyed in the recent earthquake, but by good fortune, none of our Haitian team was hurt. They have spare parts and OLPC technical staff and teachers, and stand prepared to deploy these XOs. 

Because of the XO's unique features (sunlight readability, solar powered, water resistant, drop proof), it is also an ideal tool for relief work. 

If your XO is in use, please ignore this email. We only want your broken or unused XOs. 

Sincerely, 

 

Nicholas Negroponte