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The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation has put out a call for anyone who might have bought one of
its laptops in the past to donate the machine to needy children in
Haiti.
In a posting on the company's blog site, OLPC outlined the
steps that it has taken to send new machines to Haiti in the wake of
the earthquake that hit the country earlier this month and may have
killed around 110,000 people.
While OLPC pointed out that
life-sustaining aid such as sanitation, water, food and shelter is
still badly needed, it has also joined other technology companies in
pledging hardware to help with longer-term recovery and development of
the country. The organisation recently announced plans to send
volunteers to Haiti in the near future to help with education projects.
"This
year, as part of our expanded OLPCorps program, we will be sending
Corps members to Haiti. These field volunteers will serve as an
integral resource for displaced students and teachers as the country
begins to rebuild," OLPC stated.
The organisation has had an
ongoing presence in Haiti since 2007 and has sent around 14,000 of its
XO laptops to the country. But following the earthquake on 12 January,
the organisation has pledged to step-up its efforts and send over new
machines, as well as calling on owners of XO laptops in developed
countries to donate the machines to Haiti.
"We are also gathering
used XOs at our Dallas warehouse, to send later this year to groups of
children that have been displaced by the earthquake. If you have an XO
laptop you can spare, you can ship it to OLPC For Haiti," the
organisation stated. "It will then be refurbished and sent to Haiti
later this year."
Haiti was hit by an earthquake measuring 7 on the
Richter Scale on Tuesday, 12 January. Although the epicentre of the
quake was off the coast of the island nation, it was still only 17km
from the capital, Port-au-Prince. After-shocks measuring between 5.9
and 5.5 have also hit and experts have said that an earthquake on this
scale has not been recorded in the region for 250 years.
Donations to the aid effort in Haiti can be sent via UNICEF and the World Food Program. |
We are being asked more and more "What software do you use?" , So I thought I would knock up a little list of whats used on a day to day basis. Hopefully this will show that other than in a few cases its possible to run a business using OSS.
