Honest 836 Report post Posted July 28, 2008 Anil may join 'One Laptop Per Child' project 28 Jul 2008, 0100 hrs IST, TOI KOLKATA: Is Anil Ambani planning to tie up with the legendary Nicholas Negroponte, founder of 'One Laptop Per Child' (OLPC), to make laptop ownership a reality for millions of underprivileged children in India for meeting their education needs? Negroponte, along with OLPC India head Satish Jha, are likely to meet the ADAG chairman next week to discuss how OLPC can work together with the Indian corporate giant on extending the coverage of OLPC's work to more states within this country. While the specifics of the likely arrangement are unclear at this stage, OLPC is banking on ADAG's interests in the communications (through Reliance Communications) and IT (through Tech Reliance) segments to work out a partnership that draws on the strengths of both parties. Informal discussions have already been held between OLPC and ADAG in the past. Currently, OLPC - whose mission is to make its 'XO laptop' (a children's machine) widely available to disadvantaged kids in underdeveloped countries - runs a pilot project at Khairat village in Maharashtra where 500 children in the 6-12 age bracket have been provided laptops for individual learning. "We hope to be in most, if not all, Indian states in the course of time," Jha said. OLPC, incidentally, has plans to create an organisational structure in India to support its initiatives. OLPC officials Matt Keller and Manusheel Gupta recently even met Bengal IT minister Debesh Das to examine ways in which OLPC could roll out its programs in state. "We recognise that school education is a state subject and those who need most help are part of that system. We will be glad if the government plans to use XO in its school systems. India's corporate sector can also make a huge difference to bridge this divide and we will appeal to them as well. We have made some progress on each front. However, given the sheer scale of what needs to be done, we have a long way to go," Jha said. OLPC was founded by Negroponte with a core of Media Lab veterans, but quickly expanded to include a wide range of from academia, industry, the arts, business, and the open-source community. Negroponte is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B Wiesner Professor of Media Technology. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
