Team
We are all MIT undergraduates and are unbelievably excited about the prospect of helping the children most in need this summer.
- Mary Wang ('12): Project Leader
- Owen Derby ('12): Technology Leader
- Maddie Mirzoeff ('12): Teaching Leader
- Janet Li ('12): Community Relations Leader
Basic Info
- Who: Peace Corps and Zach Swank, Environmental Educator
- Where: Bababe, Mauritania Brakna Region
- When: June 20th-August 22nd for some of us, June 20th-August 29th for others
Working with the Children
The children will be out of school during the period that we are there. The rainy season comes at the beginning of August, so we will not need to worry about the children needing to care for the fields during that time. Often, children will travel during the summer (the communities are sometimes nomadic, traveling to visit relatives during the summer). To help keep the children in town for our program, we will have our ground contact Zach Swank notify his community of the fact that we will be bringing the laptops and making the program available. We will make sure that we provide learning opportunities to all ethnicities and both genders.
We will work with Peace Corp volunteers to establish this project. With their input and the input of the community, we will determine how long a school day should be.
Impact on Children
Our approach to teaching children will be to take learning from passive memorization to active engagement. We believe that given the right tools and resources, children will teach themselves. One of our goals with the XOs is to teach the children how to think critically about their environment, allowing them to turn mundane situations into learning opportunities. With the tools the XOs provide, children will be able to record their community history snd cultural vibrance. They will be able to investigate their surroundings analytically, something that is beneficial for both the children and the community. They will be able to express their creativity by writing and sharing stories, artwork, and music. They will be able to model electrical circuits, keep track of local market trends, and apply their knowledge practically. This will allow them to grow up be engaged and critical adults with greater awareness of the world.
The current school system in Mauritania is not very conducive to children's learning, due in large part to the deep poverty of the country and the consequent lack of resources and tools available for students. Bringing in 100 laptops to a classroom of 6-12 year old children will have inconceivably eye-opening and irreversible effects on how they learn. Allowing each child to learn and explore the XO's one-on-one will give every student the chance to be exposed to innovative technology and all of the opportunities that come with it. The biggest opportunity is undoubtedly the Internet; the ability for students to access this infinite information database will have astounding effects on their capacity and yearning for knowledge and learning. We will also use the XO's as learning tools in the classrooms, teaching the children how to use the laptops to gain more understanding about each other and their own environment.
In addition, girls are often neglected or mistreated in Mauritanian schools. Through our program, we will ensure that girls get the same opportunities that boys do, and that all of the children, regardless of gender, will be able to be exposed to the whole wide world through XO's.
Sustainability
The Peace Corps has been involved in Bababe for more than twenty years and is making no plans to leave. By training Bababe volunteers in teaching with the XO's, and passing on these skills to new volunteers, our program should still be flourishing long after we are gone. We will also encourage the children to keep in contact with our team by inviting them to email us photos, videos, stories and artwork and to keep us updated on their lives as they get older. There is even the possibility of setting up pen pals between the Bababe students and a school in the U.S. or the U.K., so that each culture could learn about the other and so that the Bababe children could speak with other kids their age from a different part of the globe.
Our team is also in the process of establishing an official student organization at MIT dedicated to overseeing our program, logistically, financially, and personally, after we return to the U.S. By becoming an official club, we will be able to apply to the MIT Undergraduate Association Finance Board for any funds related to our organization; this board receives around $200k every year to provide funding for student groups. In addition, we will be able to fundraise both on-campus, by holding university-wide events, and off-campus, by soliciting alumni for funds or by soliciting corporate sponsorships. These are all ways in which we will be able to provide financial support after we leave, in order to maintain internet connectivity, power, connections to servers, repairs, and eventual replacement of the laptops. In addition, forming an MIT group will further student interest in our program and in OLPC in general. By forming an organization, we hope to provide support and maintenance for existing programs and also to raise the necessary funds to send new OLPC teams to Africa every summer.
Language and Communication
The local spoken languages in Bababe are Pulaar, a language used in Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, and western Mali; Hassniya, a dialect of Arabic that is understood by most children because they must learn the Koran at a young age; and French. The children also learn English in school, but at the age of 6-12, they probably only know the basics. For this reason, we will most likely teach the children in French, although we will obviously still use English in English language classes.
Two of our team members can speak some French, but we will still all work with Peace Corps volunteers to make sure that we teach the students most effectively. Some of these volunteers are mentors at the Girls Mentoring Center in Bogue who speak any mixture of English, French, Hassniya, Arabic, and Pulaar. We will familiarize these translators with our curriculum and goals each day before we meet the students, to make sure that the children receive the most accurate instructions.