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>The teacher won't be the one paying, the community will gather money if required. you are beyond clueless. any school that has a computer is a private school.
by mlevental 9y ago
>The teacher won't be the one paying, the community will gather money if required.
you are beyond clueless. any school that has a computer is a private school. public schools have zero money. there is no community doing fundraising - you're talking about people who absolutely literally live on <1$ a day and have never seen a computer before in their lives (let alone are willing to contribute money to power one).
>A small generator is USD$40 to buy here in China as I stated, not USD$300.
how much do you think it costs to ship? how high do you think import tariffs are? do you plan on holding every generator that every school needs on your lap on a flight over? i had to buy a socket wrench once - it cost me 30$ because it was imported.
>You are making a mountain out of a molehill.
i lived in rural uganda for two years and taught high school. i know exactly what i'm making into a mountain. these people can't afford toilet paper and soap. they shit into shallow holes in the ground. teachers read aloud from textbooks and students copy verbatim into trash notebooks (made out of discarded newspaper) because they can't afford textbooks. they eat boiled corn flour every day for their entire lives - a soda is a treat. just no clue man. how about this: spend the $1000 on a plane ticket and go see for yourself rather than sending rpis that no one will ever use and learn about what it's really like so you can then go on to educate others.
> I see solutions. You see problems.
lol. go ahead. do it. report back to us in a year how you've found the silver bullet the NGO community has been looking for for 40 years.
- mirimir 9y agoWhat do you think of http://one.laptop.org/ http://one.laptop.org/ ?
- mlevental 9y agoafrica doesn't need computers. it needs clean water, soap, anti-malarals, and nutritious food. cover those things and then worry about computers.
- jacobolus 9y agoThis is somewhat patronizing. Have you tried asking rural African schoolteachers what they most need? Empirically, many people all over the developing world are prioritizing communication devices over those other things you listed.
- mlevental 9y ago>Have you tried asking rural African schoolteachers what they most need? yes. many times.
- SlowBro 9y agoHow about: Each computer comes with a bar of soap, and with the skills learned you can compete in the world and afford all the soap you will ever need? I don’t see it as either/or. When computers are used properly many can lift themselves from poverty. I know because that’s what I did.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y agoMy man! Let them have soap!
- mirimir 9y agoArguably what they need is the infrastructure to produce and distribute all those things. And the economic activity for people to afford them. Except as an emergency measure, aid tends to destroy all that. But a prerequisite is education, of course. And aren't computers a key part of modern education?
- IkmoIkmo 9y agoCan you just stick to Ghana or something more specific? There's various countries which are absolutely not in need of any of those things. For example, more than 10 million people in Tunisia living on a PPP gdp/capita of $1k a month who aren't worrying about soap. Or Egypt, a country of about 100 million people living on $12k PPP gdp/capita, if Tunisia was too small. I'm not trying to say here that North-Africa is representative for all of Africa. But I am tired of people making the opposite claim.
- breakyerself 9y agoI think you're confusing helping out this class with helping solving all of Africas problems.