Money and help ?

Posted Jan 10, 2009 3:10 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (guest, #55989)
In reply to: Money and help ? by dlang
Parent article: Changes at OLPC

When "they" is a OLPC leader, should we blindly accept what is said, don't ask to watch their budget, and trust their wonderfull success story ?

OLPC is now tackling sub-saharian problems.
But it seems they have not even read a 3 page document describing _THE_ official continental plan for Africa. (NEPAD.)
http://www.nepad.org/2005/files/documents/30.pdf

Does olpc fit Nepad Objectives ? No.
I cannot explain better why i say OLPC is (now) severely misguided.

Its hard to explain in small (and emotional) posts what i learnt in several years of travels, discussions, experiences and many books readings.

Maybe google will give you some hints for nepad, gapminder, Jean Ziegler work at UN, and "right for food" (refused only by one country in the world, i let you find out which one), or Joseph Stiglitz, or digg and you will find lots of dramatic total failures, or misleading projects.

If you want a sad real story where it would have been infinitely better to do nothing than impose our rules (but it was supposed to help them, it had nothing to do with our business of course), read this :
http://aithne.net/index.php?e=news&id=201&lang=0

And please, keep on trying to help other people, that's great. But get deep informations, and don't misunderstand my criticism. It's necessary and good to have criticism in order to improve.

IT can provoke big civilisation disasters, by erasing culture, that's why it is important that we (foreigners) provide only help for tech, and that the local people create the socio-cultural-educational content.

Money and help ?

Posted Jan 10, 2009 4:08 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

anything that claims to be _THE_ plan for a continent is suspicious to start with. and just because it wasn't in that plan (whenever it was drafted), doesn't mean that it's not a useful idea.

you need to investigate how OLPC is working, not just read the press reports from NN's speaches. there is heavy involvement from people in-country, they are working with and through the ministry of education (or equivalent), they aren't just drop shipping laptops to schools and declaring success

Money and help ?

Posted Jan 10, 2009 9:37 UTC (Sat) by Alterego (guest, #55989) [Link]

>> anything that claims to be _THE_ plan for a continent is suspicious to start with

Are you a troll ?
Did you check Nepad site, at least the home page and the url i gave wrt IT ?

They are poor, but certainly not stupid nor ignorant.