Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Give Many program gives low-income children access to computers

By Marisa Treviño of Latina Lista

We’re only one week away from the official start of the holiday season and already toy drives, food can collections and wish lists are beginning to rev up for their launches next week to help local charities.

But for those of us feeling particularly generous and concerned that there is a significant amount of low-income children in Dallas without access to a home computer, there’s a special holiday program to help with this issue.

It’s part of the global One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program and it’s called Give One. Get One.

In case, you haven’t heard about the original program, the low-cost laptop was developed to even out the digital divide across the world by supplying the sturdy, basic machines to children in underdeveloped countries.

The inventors of the computers envisioned that countries would immediately jump on the bandwagon to empower their future generations but orders for the computers have been a little slow.

So, to help jump start the program, the people behind the OLPC have decided to try a 2-for-1 special. And like the original intent of the program, the extra computer would be sent to a child overseas. (The Give One. Get One. program ends November 26.)

Yet, there is a way to get some of these sturdy laptops into the hands of local, deserving kids — through the Give Many program.

At $200/laptop, a very generous person or an organization looking to do something different this Christmas, can buy 100+ computers and designate where a certain percentage of those computers will go.

For example, if giving 100 computers away, the donor designates where 60% can go. The OLPC still gets to designate the other 40% to the country of their choice.

Either way, it’s helping children not just meet their immediate educational needs but helps with the likelihood that they will have a much brighter future.

Pegasus News content partner: Latina Lista. You can find the main site for Latina Lista, which includes national news and views, podcasts, the store and more here.

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