Technology for Education Fund

Dear Technology for Education Supporters,

2010 was a successful year for the Technology for Education Fund, with more than $12,000 raised via GlobalGiving to improve the quality of education for the Fund’s current beneficiaries.

Currently, there are three projects being supported by the Technology for Education Fund: one to provide mobile PC carts and their corresponding equipment to students in Egypt, being implemented by CARE; another that connects Haitian and US students via a wiki for unique learning and collaboration opportunities, run by the Mortel Family Charitable Foundation; and a third to provide PCs to students in India via CARE.

While the aggregate numbers and information are impressive, they don’t necessarily take enough notice of the people benefitting from these efforts.  So we’d like to share a portion of a recent update from the Mortel Family Charitable Trust’s work in Haiti.

In October 2010, when the Haitian school year began, the students of Palmyra Area School District in Pennsylvania began planning their wiki collaborative with the Les Bons Samaritains school in Haiti.  At their first meeting, a student member suggested using the Young Artists For Haiti song, “Wavin’ Flag” as the group’s theme song for the year. They felt the song captured the pride and perseverance of the Haitian students with which they’d interacted despite continued adversity in Haiti.  The refrain of the song summarizes the message far more succinctly:

When I get older, I will be stronger.

They’ll call me freedom just like a wavin’ flag.

Thanks to your continued support, students in Egypt, Haiti, and India will all be stronger when they get older because of the education they are able to receive today.

Happy New Year!

The GlobalGiving Team

Dear Supporters,

Thanks to your generosity, the Technology for Education Fund has helped CARE Egypt deploy 500 classmate PCs by purchasing 20 mobile charging carts, 20 teacher laptops, and providing technology training for over 100 teachers across 20 schools. Five Intel volunteers, working as part of the Intel Education Service Corps, traveled to Egypt in December 2009 to help install the PCs and provide the teacher training. Susan Faulkner wrote about it in a recent blog post, the link for which you can see below:

"I got to know the positive spirit of Egyptians working as part of a team of five Intel Education Service Corps volunteers. We have completed the field work phase in Egypt of a two-month service program. Max Alt, Dina Ghobashy, Ali Rabbani, Leroy Tripette and I worked with our partner NGO (non-governmental organization), CARE Egypt, for a little over two weeks in rural villages deploying 500 Intel-powered classmate PCs in 20 schools. The Intel-powered classmate PCs had been donated to Egypt’s Ministry of Education, and the Ministry generously allocated them to CARE for this program. These classmate PCs (CMPCs) will benefit 13,000 students, over 56% of whom are girls. CARE places special emphasis on investing in girls because their empowerment benefits whole communities."

With your continued support, CARE is preparing to launch a similar project in India, where it will be able to further promote the effective use of technology in education.

Thanks, as always, and we'll be back in touch with an update on India in the months ahead.

Best regards,

The Technology for Education Fund

Links:

• CSR@Intel Blog Post by Susan Faulkner

Dear Supporters,

Thank you for your generosity towards the Technology for Education Fund! The Fund has gotten off to a successful start, with the first $50,000 donated by Intel supporting a new program through CARE Egypt. CARE will be implementing computer carts with 500 Intel-powered classmate PCs in twenty schools, which will be used for classroom instruction and after school extra-curricular activities, reaching roughly 13,000 students in total, more than half of whom are girls. Additional funds raised will allow CARE to expand this project and launch similar efforts in other developing countries around the world.

And as of this week, donations to the Technology for Education Fund will be generously matched dollar-for-dollar by Intel up to $15,000 (through December 31, 2009 or until funds are depleted). Donations in this time period will benefit additional projects by CARE, the details of which are being finalized right now. The additional funds will be also be used to enhance the quality of education in developing countries with the use of technology. Stay tuned for further updates on how and in what location these funds will be used.

Thanks again for all your support!

The Technology for Education Fund