Bringing Down the Digital Divide through One Laptop Per Child

Whether you’re 6 or 60, there’s one great educational tool that helps all people learn and communicate cross cultural divides: a computer.

But while you and your children may take Internet access for granted, many children in developing nations lack access to basic elements like electricity, much less an Internet connection or a working computer. And even in schools and housholds that could conceivably be equipped with computers, the cost is generally far too expensive for the average household to afford. As a result, children miss out on opportunities to become actively engaged in the learning process, and remain isolated from the world around them.

Since 2007, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation has been working to change all that. The organization is dedicated to getting basic, affordable laptops equipped with educational software and wireless Internet access into the hands of children all around the world, from Afghanistan to the Australian outback. The computers cost $180, but much of that cost is subsidized by corporate sponsors or by the American “Give One Get One” program, which donates a free laptop for every laptop purchased in the United States.

In Australia, where the low-cost laptops have recently been distributed to Aboriginal students in remote schools, “this means helping children in remote communities cross the ‘digital divide’ by giving them laptops that are not only fully loaded with educational and entertaining programs to help them learn, but that can also be connected to the Internet so they can share their experiences with the rest of the world and, likewise, learn from others,” Rangan Srikhanta, executive director of One Laptop Per Child Australia, said in a statement.

Another of One Laptop Per Child’s recent projects involves partnering with the Rwandan government to open a new learning center for children, equipped with laptops and wireless Internet access. The Rwandan government has made it a mission to prioritize childrens’ education, and has vowed to provide all 2.2 million primarily school children with laptops by the year 2012.

It’s a promising and important step for the African nation, as the organization’s vice president of learning, David Cavello, told CNN. “Rwanda is recovering from genocide," he said. This is a "real engagement of a society directing itself to a different future.”