THE One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) Project breathes of far-sightedness, success and initiative; every Guyanese should sing a paean for this venture.

At the end of 2014, the statistics will show that approximately 50 per cent of the entire OLPF Project quota will have been completed.

These Mora Point residents head home with their laptops

This project proves an old adage to be quite true and relevant: “Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions” and these words ratify the thinking of Edgar Cayce (considered the father of Holistic Medicine). The quote also encapsulates this ingenious programme, laughed at initially by jealous doubters, but now the great debunker of critics and the ‘wonder-additive’ to a better life for so many Guyanese.

The genesis of the One Laptop Per Family Programme goes back to January 21, 2011, when it was launched at the Guyana International Conference Centre. The objective was and still is about providing ‘at-home’ Information and Communications Technology (ICT) opportunities for an estimated 90,000 Guyanese families.

The programme was launched by then President Bharrat Jagdeo, who envisaged at the time, the ‘enhancing of lives’ for the beneficiaries of these laptops, but with a stirring, people-oriented caveat.

These OLPF recipients going through some training

 

PURPOSE & SCOPE
“The people who are collecting these laptops are not getting them free…you don’t have to pay for them, but it requires commitment in terms of time and effort and community work and with a promise to help others…This is a national project. It is a project that helps you to help others,” President Jagdeo said at the project’s launch.

As for its scope, this project’s overall intention is to aid in Guyana’s goal of ensuring that all of its 180,000 households have computers. This means that the project’s 90,000 computers are really aimed at benefitting some 50 per cent of selected households, bereft of any.

So the project did not start, nor is it being advanced, in a sporadic, hap-hazard manner, leaving to chance those who really need the laptops. The qualified households fall into various categories, and thus, those whose present amenities already include laptops will not be surfeited. The ‘idea-inherent’ is about bringing parity to Guyana as a nation, giving its people an equally comfortable playing field, and catering for its few minority groups, namely the hinterland citizens and the impaired.

Two Amerindian women with their laptops

An important point to this Jagdeo mindset is that laptops form part of routine and mundane living. The immediate past erstwhile president felt that, “… regardless of the educational background and income level of families, all children must have comparable levels of performance…” and so the necessity of these gadgets; they are not novelties and toys (any more), but form the base for almost everything in life.

Take the case of the connection between classrooms and homes – it should be noted that the plan is that Government and GT&T collaborate, so that families with the laptops can access the internet, and this brings in the aspect of school, since the internet is the great avenue for important and necessary information.

When entire families receive a single item, that item becomes a hub for mutual fellowship. The project then embodies this ‘unifying’ concept. It adds a great human and cohesive element to each laptop; giving it an immeasurable value.

This mother and her child from Parika after receiving the laptop

At the subliminal and higher levels, it seeks to unite families, bridge any existing gap between school and home, and inform about the inter-relatedness of various sectors in Guyana; no wonder, at it’s launch, the overriding motif was that of the OLPF Project’s being one that was most ‘national.’

SCORCHING REBUFF
If people take for granted this project and skeptics still scoff at it, the word of irrefutable rebuke comes from two groups of people – the mostly Amerindians from Guyana’s interior, and the few from the disadvantageous coterie of the infirmed. For too long, Amerindians and the handicapped people have been objectified, making them feel as some distant ‘other’. That is no more!

Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), already earning millions, is not just about forest management and global concerns. These are important issues and maybe meant for the esoteric. The LCDS incorporates the element of the solar panel, largesse from Government to the Hinterland communities.

This panel allows for electricity in the family, and this is where ICT takes off, for a people, whom many still consider archaic, and the Opposition still fails to cater for (as was reflected in the cutting of the Amerindian development Fund (ADF) from Budget 2014).

Government, through this OLPF initiative, also takes into account another fringe group, for years never quite prioritised. In a great show of deference (and maybe compensation for years of neglect), the OLPF Secretariat recently distributed a second set of laptops to the Guyana Society for the Blind (GSB).

Members of the Blind Institute with laptops given to them by the One Laptop Per Family

No ordinary doing too, as these laptops are tailor-made for the group; the unit possesses the requisite computer software, that is, Job Access with Speech (JAWS) that allows for visually impaired users, to read the screen of the laptop, using either a text-to-speech output, or a refreshable Braille display. Keyboards and headphones were also given to the recipients.

CULMINATION
The logical boast from President Ramotar is that Guyana is likely to achieve the status of ‘Developed Country’ in his life time. Is he far-fetched?
The answer is a resounding ‘no’. The reason is that upon culmination of the project, a number of things will fall into place – LCDS’ benefits; Electrification of Hinterland communities; and high level of efficiency in Guyana’s telecommunications sector.

This third aspect is tipping for explosion. The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph’s (GT&T’s) Suriname Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS) is bringing the prospects of a new generation of opportunities in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector; and Digicel Guyana has already begun taking steps to improve the delivery of service to Guyanese customers.

This makes Guyana, with its eight successive years of economic growth, a major world force. Already, investments are multiplying both locally and internationally, tourism is a budding and expanding sector, and the Cheddi Jagan International Airport is racing towards global expectations.

These mean that Guyana must be on par where ICT is concerned. So far so good-the near end of the OLPF Project will tie up all the ongoing and loose ends, making Guyana an enviable country and one to be celebrated. -- (A GINA Feature)

Source - http://guyanachronicle.com/one...y-with-immense-good/