Who We Are
Mission Statement
Goal
When
Where
Proposal
(This is what the Cornell Team had)
- Description of Mauritania: geography, ethnicity, culture, history
- Facts (Statistics from the CIA factbook) about Mauritania: poverty, literacy rates, internent access
- How XOs can impact the people of Mauritania
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Tidjikja, a city of 6000 and the capital of the Tagant region, is a vibrant, yet rural town. Its inhabitants are aware of the outside world, but their only link to it is a 12 hour drive to the capital city, Nouakchott. Tidjikjaians are enthusiastic about learning and interested in other cultures. Seth Luxenberg, who is currently stationed there while working for the Peace Corps, reports that he has helped to form a local English club, and is corresponding with a vocational school in the area to teach computer skills. In addition, he teaches English and environmental skills at the local elementary schools école primaire 1 and école primaire 5. We will work with these schools to distribute the laptops to the students there.
With these laptops, students will be able to break free of the traditional "eyes front" method of learning and can learn at their own pace. In addition, their entire extended family will have the benefit of being able to interact with a computer. Our pedagogical leads are creating sample lesson plans to prepare the teachers to integrate the laptops with the curriculum, which is split between Arabic and French. We plan to set up a correspondence with a local school in Ithaca so the students can share their experiences with American students of the same age.
Logistically, the students will be on break during the summer, though the teachers will be available. With support from the local community, we hope to set up extracurricular laptop training sessions so that when the children come back to school, they will be well versed in laptop usage. Seth Luxenberg will be in the area for another year, giving him ample time to train and hand off ownership of the project to the administrators of the school or a local community group. We will transport the laptops personally from Dakar, Senegal to Tidjikja. Since Tidjikja is a rural town, security will not be a problem - everyone knows each others business and crime is very low. Seth and other Peace Corps Volunteers in town speak Hassaniya, so communication will not be a problem