<incom> The Impact of Riots in Haiti on One Laptop Per Child

[Geert Lovink]

The Impact of Riots in Haiti on One Laptop Per Child

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Alexandre Van de Sande in Countries: Haiti

www.olpcnews.com

Timothy Falconer, from the Waveplace Foundation, wrote to inform about 
the current status of events in Haiti, as many riots took over 
Port-au-Prince, where he is running a OLPC pilot project:

A glimmer of Haitian XO hope
"The children and staff are safe, though they have only enough food and 
medicine for about a week. The markets have been closed in 
Port-Au-Prince, so this could become a concern. Emile said earlier 
today that he feels things will get better soon because of the 
peacekeepers.

Everyone's taking it day by day. I just got off the phone with Emile, 
our chief mentor in Haiti, who is staying in the countryside until 
things come down. Our pilot is effectively on hold due to safety 
concerns. I'll update you when I hear more about the children, who are 
close to the area of the protests."

This raises two important issues on the Haiti Pilot. The first is one 
that was brought before by Wayan: OLPC is an education project, but 
there are maybe some places that are beyond the reach of the One Laptop 
goal. It seems that the riots are calming down now, but what if they 
did not?

If violence in Port au Prince escalated to a point where most family 
would be forced to flee to surrounding areas, what would happen to the 
pilot project? Would the families disperse and the valuable laptops 
quickly vanish from the kid's hand as they where forced to sell/give it 
away? Or would Waveplace Foundation grab all the laptops from 
international donors and move out of the country, or risk having the 
school looted to bare bones?

Maybe we have to wait until political stability has reigned in some 
places, before a long term education project can be invested. Maybe 
it's too much risk for those precious resources that could be more 
safely invested in quiet rural areas in Peru. Maybe the "Mudhut 
argument" is true and laptops serve no good for kids below a certain 
threshold of poverty, that lack more basic things such a peaceful 
environment in which to grow.

Or maybe not, and that's the second important issue on this. Watch this 
footage sent us from Haiti:
Although it has CNN stamped on it it's clear that much of those videos 
are made from amateur cameras. We are talking about impoverished Haiti, 
all right, but we are talking about a 21st Century impoverished Haiti 
and they are also part of the digital imaging generation, and those in 
the middle to upper class in Port au Prince can afford some way to film 
video and post it online.

None of them are actually coming from kids with XO laptops, but - hey 
they could be. We are all shocked hearing those reports of violence 
from Haiti, but maybe if there were no computers anywhere we might 
never hear them in the first place. Thanks to this connecting 
technology we can see the San Francisco Olympic torch protests live on 
the web, we can see the violence in Zimbabwe in Google maps.

And thanks to a mesh system this communication network might still work 
if everything else goes down. So giving the impoverished kids of Haiti 
a way to allow their voices be heard, their stories be told and 
allowing them hearing news from the world outside even during a crisis 
is a way to be a part of this new generation.

And maybe this is worth all the risks.