Technology for Education Fund

Happy New Year, Technology for Education Supporters!

We hope 2012 is off to a great start for all of you. We’re writing to provide an update all the great work helped by the Technology for Education Fund in 2011. 

In 2011, the Fund continued to support three projects: CARE’s work in India and Egypt, and the Mortel Family Foundation’s work in Haiti. 

In Egypt, CARE continued to work with PCs in classrooms, providing safe spaces for girls to learn, share ideas, and socialize.  The program has increased computer literacy among its students, providing them with better skills for future studies and/or employment; it has strengthened teachers’ and other staff’s capacity to integrate technology into the school’s curriculum and instructional design; and it has created positive and active social networks for the girls participating in the program.

In Haiti, the Mortel Family Foundation was able to build a computer room for grades K-6 at Les Bons Samaritans school and the recently opened James Stine College, both in St. Marc.  These computer rooms provide internet access and interactive white boards to students who previously had little, if any, experience with technology.  The increased connectivity has helped expand their worldview and, combined with the schools’ talented teaching staff, will help prepare the students for graduate school, technical programs, or employment after graduation.

In India, Intel employees visited CARE’s work to help deploy Intel classmate PCs in various schools.  At the Udaan school, designed to help girls catch up from a gap in their schooling, Intel volunteers taught students practical skills like navigating a desktop, using a mouse, opening, saving, and formatting but always ended class with a fun activity like using the computers’ cameras.

Your continued generosity and support have made this progress possible – we can’t thank you enough!

Best wishes,
The GlobalGiving Team

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