We are a team of four college students (and ONE members) in the US who are spending our summer in Mboro, Senegal working with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and the Peace Corps to bring 200 laptops to students at Ecole Notre Dame Elementary School. Ecole Notre Dame is unique in that it receives free power and clean water from the local phosphorous factory. Free power has greatly assisted in the financial sustainability of deploying OLPC’s XO laptops to all second, third, fourth and fifth grade students by October.

Pierre Khar Tine, Director of Ecole Notre Dame, had been researching the feasibility of bringing computers to his school for several years. With the help of a local Peace Corps volunteer, Pierre learned about OLPC and has been working closely with us to bring XO computers and electronic education programs to his students. Pierre’s philosophy is that “students need to know how to read; they need to know how to write; and, they need to know how to use computers. Computer illiteracy is illiteracy.”

The best way to insure sustainability is to create a community project, not simply a school project. As deploying several hundred child-sized computers to one Catholic school is no easy task, the school enlisted the help of the community in making the necessary infrastructural changes, including: installing wireless routers and a school server, digging trenches to bury Ethernet cable, and building customized cabinets to charge and store the laptops each night. Fortunately, we weren’t disappointed – the community really came out in support of the project! A local woodworker built twelve charging cabinets; a hardware store owner constructed power strips; a contact wired the classrooms for internet; and the head of a Catholic school in Senegal generously donated conduit to cover all bare wires in each classroom. Their goal was to create a permanent fixture the school could be proud of.

As ONE members, we know there are multiple solutions we must employ to end extreme poverty. We don’t believe computers alone will greatly impact Mboro, but we do believe that the students who own these laptops will. One exciting upcoming project in Mboro, fashioned by both teachers and students, is to implement an online school newspaper. This newspaper will encourage students to present their insights on local issues to a global audience. Students at Ecole Notre Dame have taken a break from their daily routine of rote memorization and have begun asking serious questions about themselves and their community. In only 8 weeks, students have begun to use a connected laptop to think critically about their environment. With more time, they’ll start to generate positive change within Mboro.

-Justin Burnett, James Elkins, Stephanie Selvick and Eli Luxenberg