Family and Friends,
I am preparing to serve Humanity in Kenya, Africa this Summer. I am part of a small team of UTSA and Baylor students who submitted a proposal to the One Laptop Per Child, non-profit organization. Our proposal was one of 30 projects (out of 215) that was selected to deploy 100 Laptops to school children in Africa. The OLPC organization is providing the laptops, training and some funding, but we are in need of additional resources.
God has blessed me in so many ways, and I am so excited to go and serve others in His name.
Our time in Kenya will be spent in many orphanages and schools, but our time will be focused mainly at City Harvest Ministries which runs a school in the worlds second largest slum, Kibera. My name is Sophia Worth and I am a Psychology major, transferring to Texas A&M. My other team mates include Leila Benitez, Biology Major at UTSA; Alex Del Aguila, Biology Major at UTSA; Brandon Webb Human Resource Major at Baylor; and Cory Osburn Religion Major at Baylor.
OLPC's Mission:
"It’s not a laptop project. It’s an education project
In 2002, MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte experienced first-hand how connected laptops transformed the lives of children and their families in a remote Cambodian village. A seed was planted: If every child in the world had access to a computer, what potential could be unlocked? What problems could be solved? These questions eventually led to the foundation of One Laptop per Child, and the creation of the XO laptop.
OLPC’s mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education. While children are by nature eager for knowledge, many countries have insufficient resources to devote to education—sometimes less than $20 per year per child (compared to an average of $7,500 in the United States). By giving children their very own connected XO laptop, we are giving them a window to the outside world, access to vast amounts of information, a way to connect with each other, and a springboard into their future. And we’re also helping these countries develop an essential resource—educated, empowered children" (One Laptop Per Child.)
One Laptop Per Child. 2009. http://www.laptop.org/en/vision/mission/index.shtml.
We will be in Kenya for over 2 months and I will record my trip through this blog so stay tuned!!
