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Contact: Luke Dolby (Chairman of Build a School)

Build A School
Registered UK Charity No: 1118476
Website: www.buildaschool.org.uk
Email: luke@buildaschool.org.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1273 622174
Mob +44 (0)7976 07 07 17  

  • You beat me to it- I would have been getting in touch with OLPC in the next three months anyway.
  • This fits perfectly with our objectives, and we are currently working on some other exciting renewable energy projects, including a kinetic energy seesaw that allows children to play and generate power for their classrooms at the same time.
  • We can assist in two ways:
    • Providing schools with desperately needed access to laptops
    • Providing a urban, accessible space at our new sustainable development education centre in Lilongwe, Malawi, to demonstrate and showcase the laptops (for free). 
  • The benefit of point 2 is this helps promote the laptops in an environment that will receive thousands of visitors and in particular key decision makers who often don't have time to access rural areas when visiting a country such as Malawi.
  • It's strength is it is available to local people and foreign visitors for free in a central location.
  • With so many projects in Africa attempting to launch projects in rural or hard to reach places, this centre is already looking forward to showcasing great ideas that offer a sustainable benefit to children's lives and in particular education.
  • If we can discuss your proposal further, please call either of the numbers below or email your contact information and a suitable time to call.  I could have visited MIT last month as I met with the Millennium Promise as our sustainable development education centre proposal was submitted to the Earth Institute.

Questions for Luke from Build A School, Malawi

Questions we've already asked and are waiting to be answered:

  1. Our stay will most likely be for ten weeks over the summer. Will the children be in school from June-August? How many children do you think would be available or would want to attend a program for computer-learning over the summer?
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  2. What kind of power supply do the schools have that we could utilize for the laptops?
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  3. Is there anywhere for our team to stay? We have approximately 7 or 8 people on our team, and will only receive a $10,000 USD stipend if our proposal gets accepted, which basically covers only plane tickets. It would be great to have relatively cheap lodging, otherwise we would have to apply for more grants, etc.
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  4. Will the school be able to receive a 230 kg package of laptops and equipment? Is there a place to store this equipment during our stay?
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  5. What languages do the children at your schools speak? If it is not English, then are there ways for overcoming this barrier?
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  6. Will Build A School be capable of maintaining the deployment of laptops after we leave? Will there be people willing to oversee the project after August?
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  7. The center in Lilongwe to showcase the laptops sounds like a great idea. How exactly would this work, though? Would some of our team be in charge of running this center, while the other members worked at the actual schools? Where are the schools located relative to Lilongwe? OLPCorps is more focused on distributing laptops in rural areas.
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More questions:

  1. What are the teachers like? Are they permanent? Do they know English? Will they be able to be trained in computers?
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  2. Specific infrastructure of school? Curriculum?
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  3. Safety? Crime / Health?
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  4. Travel---visas, immunizations, etc.
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  5. Internet connectivity
  6. Acceptance -- will we be easily accepted/integrated into the community?
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