Waveplace Blog : Location - Haiti

(from newsletter) In Early May I headed back to Haiti to check on the Waveplace pilot at Mercy and Sharing's John Branchizio School. Haiti is one of the most turbulent places in the western hemisphere, and since I had last been there in February, rising food prices had caused rioting and the ouster of the country's Prime Minister. During this time, by necessity Waveplace's pilot had been put on hold. When I touched down on the Port au Prince tarmac it was relief to see that the city was back to normal. (Though I did have a UN soldier standing...

(written by Amanda Adams of Mercy & Sharing, from newsletter) During the most recent period of rioting and civil unrest in Haiti, we at Mercy & Sharing were forced into "emergency mode" to keep the precious children in our care safe. A bright spot for us was the more than 160 Haitians we employ in our operations in Haiti. Some of these amazing people courageously risked their lives to navigate around mass riots and burning barricades to deliver food, supplies and life saving medicine to our orphanages, schools, feeding centers, clinic and abandoned baby unit where we care for abused,...

Today I read some very nice comments from a few of the people who donated their XO laptops to children in our Haiti pilot. Last week I posted photos of the children that got their laptops as well as a new video. The first donor comment was from Emily Davidow, who also blogged: Thank you so much for the opportunity to participate in this wonderful program! Seeing the pictures and movie made me so happy. Looking forward to following the progress in Haiti and all your programs through the newsletter. The next was from author David Weinberger, who blogged as...

Just received some photos from the start of our Haitian pilot, along with some new photos from our St John pilot, which is in its sixth week. * Haiti photos * St John photos...

(from newsletter) For the past two months my brain has been in two different places, only a few hundred miles apart on a map of the Caribbean, but worlds apart in challenges faced. On St. John we are now six weeks into our pilot. Learning most of the XO is almost effortless for the kids. Chat, Write, Record, Journal, and Browse took me all of about fifteen minutes to get a few kids started, then I just sat back and watched the newfound knowledge spread like wildfire. Learning Etoys is more like jumping into the deep end of the pool,...

Today we're starting our pilot in Haiti, at one of the Mercy & Sharing schools in Port-Au-Prince. Our very own Bill Stelzer, leader of our St John pilot, will be teaching Emile Roulsa Jean and two others to become Haiti's first Waveplace mentors. They'll then start a ten-week pilot using the nineteen laptops we were able to receive in time. Our greatest thanks go to the ten kind souls who donated their XOs last weekend, along with David Weinberger, Jerry Michalski, and Wayan Vota for helping spread the word. David & Jerry are A-List blogerati and Wayan runs OLPC News,...

Just sent out a plea to forums and bloggers I know. David Weinberger not only posted it, but he's sending us his XO! Here's the plea: Waveplace is a non-profit starting an XO pilot in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, in ten days. OLPC was going to be giving us laptops, but it fell through, which is why I'm trying to get twenty XOs from elsewhere. Your laptop may end up in the hands of one of the most needy children in the Western Hemisphere. The school where the laptop will be sent is run by Susie Scott Krabacher, who has been the...

(written by Susie Scott Krabacher, president of M&S, from newsletter) On our January trip to Haiti we had a special treat to show the kids at our Mercy House Orphanage, the new XO laptop designed especially for children by the geniuses at One Laptop Per Child. OLPC had just announced the country recipients of the donated laptops from their Give One Get One program and, praise be, Haiti made the list. (Although as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere it's hard to imagine how it couldn't!) After setting everything up with Tim Falconer, president of Waveplace Foundation, our Mercy...

In the year 2000, world leaders made eight pretty incredible promises, which are known as the Millennium Development Goals. The first of these goals is to reduce by half the number of people living in extreme poverty by the year 2015. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1 USD per day. More than 1.5 billion people qualify, which is roughly 1 out of every 4 people alive. Two-thirds of these people don't have access to clean water, and malnutrition is so bad that six million children die EVERY YEAR before their fifth birthday. That's a holocaust-sized catastrophe...