Global Potential is coming together nicely. The Brooklyn International
High School @ Prospect Heights has agreed to partner with us, which is
especially exciting after meeting the school’s principal, special
programs coordinator, and students. As a former teacher, it is always
encouraging to come across a school leadership that is so enthusiastic
about creating special opportunities for its students. This enthusiasm is
particularly important in this instance because the school will play such
an important role in helping us identify and prepare the students for
their stay abroad.

On the Global Potential-DR front, we have made important headway in
identifying a partner/host community in the Dominican Republic. Impulsar,
an organization dedicated to the promotion of not-for-profits in the
Dominican Republic, has agreed to promote Global Potential-DR to its
partner organizations in the border region of the country. I first met
Impulsar’s Director in 2005 when I worked in the Dominican Republic, and
was impressed by her professionalism and deep understanding of the
country’s needs and the challenges it faces. I can’t imagine a better
partner to have in the Dominican Republic for the important task of
finding a partner/host community for Global Potential-DR.

The One Laptop Per Child project has become a divisive topic of late. Surefooted futurists look to it as a major innovation in rural development and an unparalleled opportunity for third world children to leapfrog into the twenty-first century. Others, such as the Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, are much more skeptical.

Wainaina recently wrote a piece about the OLPC project which was published in Harper’s and (in a longer form) in the Spring 2007 issue of Bidoun. (Bidoun article is right here).

At the heart of the matter for Wainaina is a deep and abiding suspicion of international OLPC apologists and of the fact that the laptops in question will be sold only to govermnents. Wainainia’s article should be required reading in any introductory class on globalization and development. He states the major problems –distrust of national governments, poor official infrastructure, NGOs’ track records of ballyhooed promises not kept, emerging local markets displaced by international groups–more clearly and concisely than any textbook I’ve come across.

We are reminded that limited multidisciplinarity in development may not always be enough. The laptop appears, at least on the surface, to be a prime example of multidisciplinary development. However, Wainainia goes a long way toward illuminating just how painfully [sic] uncomplex the OLPC project is and how one cute little laptop may not save the world afterall.

As a side note, the Spring 2007 issue of Bidoun also features an excellent roundtable discussion on the OLPC project. There’s a lot more technical information to be had here, as well as a frank discussion of the limits of the OLPC in places like India and Egypt. Unfortunately, this article isn’t available online, but Bidoun can be found at your local newsstand (hopefully).