A computer intended to improve education for children in developing countries is to be offered to western buyers. -- Engineers at the One Laptop Per Child project, based in the US, have built a low-cost computer designed to work in some of the world's most undeveloped areas. Until now only governments have been invited to buy the machines, but in an attempt to jump-start the project, western consumers will soon be able to buy their own version.

In return for spending $399 (£197), customers will receive their own laptop as well as paying for a second computer for children in deprived parts of world. To begin with, the machines will be donated to youngsters in countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti and Rwanda.

The machine, conceived by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, incorporates a number of innovations, including a high-resolution screen and low power consumption. It can be powered by solar energy, foot pump or a clockwork charger. The idea is that access to learning aids and hi-tech equipment will help children in some of the world's poorest countries learn skills that can lift them out of poverty. The scheme will run for two weeks in November, and only in North America.   more »

OLPC News: "Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child's computer, the OLPC Children's Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte."

"Social inclusion has been one of the foremost issues in the minds of many ... people, like me, Eduardo Villanueva Mansilla, of Lima, Perú. The advantages of using computers and the Internet as a mechanism for making governments and institutions readily available to the citizen, and to enhance the potential of consumers to act together, are always a significant component of the reasons given to invest in technology.

But social inclusion means also some degree of socialization. To include all citizens demands that those that haven't been able to (or haven't been allowed to) exercise their collective citizenship find the means to do that, but first of all, that are aware that they have the rights and duties that come with participation in a polity, in a nation as a whole. This demands a very specific form of socialization.

Historically, the most important resource for this kind of socialization has been the school system. Even more so, in many developing countries with confusing situations of race, ethnicity and class, and with structural limitations to social mobility, schools are the only significant support of the "imagined community" as discussed by Benedict Anderson. ...   more »

Selvi Alagappan rises early each day to tend to her small patch of crossandra and jasmine flowers in the rural Indian village of Mangalam, in the Union of Pondicherry. These and the mushrooms she cultivates in a nearby shack bring in a monthly income that, while still below the poverty line, keeps her large family from going hungry. — Two years ago, however, starvation was very much a reality for Selvi and her family. But like many other participants of the Biovillage Project, a collaborative development programme described by its authors as "pro-nature, pro-women, pro-poor", Selvi was given the tools and technical assistance to increase her household income and get her back on her feet again.

The project is run by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, a local non-governmental organization in Chennai, with funding and technical assistance from the Government of India and international agencies including FAO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The project began in 1992 with 42 participants in three villages. It now operates in 19 villages with a team of 24 project specialists. ...   more »

The United Nations (UN) has been recommended to set up a Statutory Body comprising G8 and G20 nations to provide political oversight to the global and national efforts to achieve the goal of a hunger-free world by 2015. — The recommendation was made in the Chennai Declaration that was adopted yesterday on the concluding day of the three-day international workshop on "Food Security: A Great Threat to Human Security" held at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSRRF) in Chennai in India.

"The goal should be eradication of hunger by 2015, and not halving the proportion or the number of the hungry in relation to any chosen base year," the declaration recommended. — It said all the member states of the UN should make the right to a balance diet, clean drinking water, environmental sanitation, primary health care and primary education a basic human right...

The programme will be completed today (Thursday) through visiting Biovillage and Auroville, a MSSRF project in Pondicherry. ...   more »

Ceres (pronounced "series") is a national network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies and investors to address sustainability challenges such as global climate change.

Mission: Integrating sustainability into capital markets for the health of the planet and its people.

About Us: At its founding 17 years ago, Ceres introduced a bold new vision to the business world. That vision is of a world in which business and capital markets promote the well being of human society and the protection of the earth's biological systems and resources. Ceres advances its vision by bringing investors, environmental groups and other stakeholders together to compel companies and capital markets to incorporate environmental and social challenges into their day-to-day decision-making. By leveraging the collective power of investors and other key stakeholders, Ceres has achieved dramatic results, among those: ...    more »

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Initiative unveiled its final industrial prototype of the XO - a laptop computer with a toylike look. But to say it's a toy is misleading. The device is intended to bring the most isolated tribal village into the Information Age, with the ultimate goal of offering one to every child on the planet. [Except for India, whose education bureaucracy vetoed OLPC participation last year.]

By keeping the price low, the OLPC initiative hopes that governments in the developing world will be able to afford them. Already, Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, Uruguay, and, most recently, Rwanda have committed to participate in the program. Rwanda hopes to have laptops for all of its schoolchildren within five years. ...   more »

Ebocha, Nigeria — Justice Eta, 14 months old, held out his tiny thumb.

An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it "the cough." People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Justice squirmed in his mother's arms. His face was beaded with sweat caused either by illness or by heat from the flames that illuminate Ebocha day and night. Ebocha means "city of lights."

The makeshift clinic at a church where Justice Eta was vaccinated and the flares spewing over Ebocha represent a head-on conflict for the Gates Foundation. In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works. ...   more »

...The concept behind the project, which Negroponte unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, less than two years ago, is as simple as its name: give all children in the developing world laptop computers of their own. If we achieved that, he believes, we could bridge what's usually termed the "digital divide." The laptops would offer children everywhere the opportunity to benefit from the Internet and would enable them to work with and learn from each other in new ways. OLPC, the nonprofit organization that Negroponte set up to manage the project, has taken responsibility for designing the computer and engaging an outside manufacturer to produce it. But the nonprofit is not going to buy the computers. That, at least for now, is the responsibility of governments, ...   more »

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program has just taken another step forward by shipping the first 10 computers from the manufacturer in Taiwan, to the US State Department for testing. This is the first batch of the $100 laptops for children in poor countries such as Nigeria, China, Brazil, Egypt and Thailand who have already placed an order for 1 million laptops... India was part of the program initially until Indian Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee reversed the decision to back the OLPC project. ...   more »

I felt this email from Frances Beinecke, the President of the Natural Resources Defense Council, was worth sharing.

You and I have got a lot to celebrate -- finally!
We have fought so unbelievably hard for six long and difficult years to defend our environment against a House and Senate leadership that has endeavored -- often on a weekly basis -- to sacrifice our natural heritage for the sake of Big Oil and other powerful special interests. ...consider this: of the "Dirty Dozen" (the 13 members of Congress targeted by the League of Conservation Voters for the poorest environmental voting records), nine were defeated.
On the flip side, eight out of nine of the League's "Environmental Champions" won their races. Dozens of candidates -- from both parties -- who ran on forward-looking energy policies were chosen by voters. At least 20 pro-environment challengers unseated anti-environment incumbents in the House. And Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger won strong voter support by signing a Global Warming Solutions Act.
Last Tuesday may well go down as one of the greenest days in American political history. ...   more »

Perimeter Institute is a community of theoretical physicists dedicated to extending theories of space, time and matter. It's home is an innovative building in Waterloo, Canada, whose archetectonics are designed to foster interaction and creative community across normally disparate disciplines.
In just five years, Perimeter researchers have contributed over 500 meaningful, peer-reviewed, scientific findings and transferred this knowledge to all manner of partners in the entire research chain. Their current areas of cross-disciplinary research include: * Foundations of Quantum Theory * Quantum Information Theory * Quantum Gravity * Superstring Theory * Particle Physics * Cosmology ...   more »

The Aravind Eye Hospital performs 240,000 eye surgeries a year, making it the largest hospital of its kind in the world. Management guru C.K. Prahalad hailed it as a "gem at the bottom of the pyramid" in one of his management books. Brilliant, who joined Google in February, 2006, is a patron of the hospital and is also a close friend of Aravind's founder, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy.

Page and Brilliant were visiting Aravind for the Google Foundation, which has been quietly expanding its altruistic footprint in India. For instance, Google has invested in Planet Read, a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve literacy by adding subtitles to Bollywood films and videos of popular folk songs, providing an easy way for Indians with limited literacy skills to practice reading. ...   more »