OLPC

One Laptop Per Child is a brilliant idea that has the goal of bringing laptops to the underprivelaged children of the world. Announced to the public in January 2005 OLPC rolled out 1,000,000 laptops to several different countries during their initial release. While there were a number of different concepts preceding OLPC, it is the main program that has survived the startup period.

A major contributor to the success of OLPC is that companies such as Red Hat, and Microsoft are both contributing operating systems for the laptops. To me this is a step in the right direction for major companies. There are also companies that are working on making cheap but functional laptops such as the XO-2, and the CM1. If more companies followed these examples I have no doubt that every child in the world could have a working laptop and be able to get access to the educational material that is now available on the World Wide Web.

OLPC is by far not the only program of this nature that is out in the world today. Another major program is called Give 1 Get 1. This program allows you either buy a single unit for $199 and have it sent to a underprivelaged child somewhere in the world, or you can buy two units for $399 and keep the second unit for yourself. OLPC and Give 1 Get 1 while not 100% successful yet are both heading in the right direction.

OLPC is designed to help underprivelaged children across the globe get their own laptops. There are countires on every inhabited continent that participate in the program. As this program grows more and more children are able to get the education they have otherwise been denied. This is a very good thing in my book. With the way the world is changing getting an education is more and more important.

Unfortunately there is also a negative with the program. The "cheap" laptops are not widely available, and you can not go out to the store and just buy one. This can cause major problems with children being at risk for theft, as well as people taking advantage of the lack of availability by auctioning off the laptops on places like e-bay.