More on the $100 laptop

I first wrote about the $100 laptop a few months ago. Now, The Christian Science Monitor is talking about it:

Rich nations, however, have a checkered history of introducing new technology to poor nations, where basics such as electricity and clean water are still often lacking. For every success story - such as hybrid, easy-to-grow rice and wheat - there are many clunker ideas, such as sending farm tractors to remote villages with no hope of spare parts. In fact, an entire movement, sparked by the late British economist E.F. Schumacher, sprang up in the 1970s to adapt "appropriate" technology to poor lands.

The "$100 laptop" seems designed with those concerns in mind.

Computers have changed our way of life, why couldn’t they change theirs?

Reality Tours

(yep, the photo has nothing to do with the Reality Tours that I'm talking about - and in fact, just might be the exact opposite. A kind of Bizarro World Reality Tour. But it was the first thing that popped up in Google Images so I thought: What the hey. Why should I be the only guy in blogger-land to not have a pic of Jessica Simpson on my Website?)

Where would you like to go?

How about to the heart of issues such as, Peace & Justice in Ireland, Sustainable development in Tanzania, the Amazon addiction to oil, fair trade in Nicaragua?

Yeah, doesn’t sound like much fun does it? But if you’re the type that likes their vacations more interesting and enlightening than drunken, sunny, and relaxing, you may want to check out the Reality Tours offered by Global Exchange.

What is a reality tour. I’ll let Global Exchange tell ya:

Reality Tours offer participants an opportunity to journey to other countries to examine a situation firsthand. This gives the individual the chance to understand the issues beyond what is communicated by the mass media. By joining us on one of these delegations, a participant will have the chance to learn about unfamiliar cultures, meet with people from various walks of life, and establish meaningful relationships with people from other countries. Most significantly, Reality Tours endow participants with a new vantage point from which to view and affect US foreign policy. We hope to also prompt participants to examine related issues in their own community and society.

I guess I would consider my upcoming trip a reality tour. I’m currently lining up local contacts to educate me on things. But will my tour “endow (this) participant with a new vantage point from which to view and affect US foreign policy.”? Who knows? I don’t see me influencing foreign policy all that much. But I hope to better understand the people and places I visit. Is that enough?

My self-guided reality tours may be somewhat foolish since I fly blind (read: don’t know what the heck I’m doing). For those who aren’t so foolish, joining a “delegation” through Global Exchange will likely yield an unforgettable experience all the same.

Posers

I’m working on another letter for Casa Guatemala. This one is trying to get donations to send their older students to boarding schools. To brief me on the situation, Angie, the orphanage’s director, sent me a few pics.

I recognized a few faces from my trip last year, but what really stood out was all of the posing going on. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me? When I think of orphans in places like Guatemala, I usually don’t think “High Fashion.” But put a camera in front of girls like these and look out because here comes the steely, ice cold stairs, and the perfect premeditated hand placement.

It just goes to show that a teenage girl is a teenage girl regardless if she is wearing Gap or hand-me-downs from some relief organization.