[geeks] $100 One Laptop Per Child - grist for the mill

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sat, Nov 18, 2006 at 06:50:16PM +0000, Mike Meredith wrote:
> Interestingly, the UN when going into a disaster area will always
> attempt to source food supplies locally. They are successful much of the
> time.

It's not the U.N. that does this. It's often NGOs (non governemtal
organisations) such as CARE, many of the Christian charities, etc.

 
> It would be interesting to know what 'all those people' would think
> themselves ... one story is hardly overwhelming evidence but is never
> the less interesting. This one is from a BBC mini-documentary and I
> haven't the faintest idea of what part of Africa it's from, but ...
> 
> It's about a woman who was widowed with three young children to feed,
> who almost starved before she was given a micro-loan to help her set
> herself up as a sort of shop-keeper in her village. She admitted things
> were precarious and her family would not infrequently go hungry for one,
> two or even three days.

This was covered in Bryson's book. The woman in question was given a loan
from a program sponsored by CARE. Very likely the film was shot when
Bryson went to Africa, or the BBC made a film from his book. 

To be exact it was Kenya.

 
> But she was a big believer in education, wanting her children to be
> educated and escape the subsistence economy and possibly become
> politicians to sort out the corruption in her country.
> 
> It was quite obvious that she would sell her soul to give her children
> an OLTP to give them the textbooks she could probably never afford to
> buy.
> 
> (Not that the OLTP was mentioned at any time during the report)

What is an OLTP?

Geoff.
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