MarketingInsideOut.com

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative is so very cool and I’m glad to be a part. I bought one and donated one on day one of the special “Give One, Get One” promotion. Tonight I got the following email:

Thank you for being one of the first to participate in Give One Get One.
All of us at One Laptop per Child were inspired by the number of people who joined our Give One Get One program on its very first day! Your participation makes you part of the growing community of people working to give children all over the world new opportunities to grow, explore, learn and express themselves.

Your XO laptop is on the way.
Your donated XO laptop will soon be delivered into the hands of a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia or Rwanda. In one of our recipient children’s own words, “I want to thank you people because you had given us the laptop and I love it so much.” Your generosity will make a world of difference in these children’s lives, and in the future of their respective countries.

Thanks to your early action, your XO laptop is scheduled to be delivered between December 14 and December 24. Our “first day” donors are our highest priority and we are making every effort to deliver your XO laptop(s) as soon as possible. We will send you an update upon shipment.

—

What a great cause. What a great project. If you don’t know much about it, you can watch this video where Nicholas Negroponte (MIT media lab founder) and founder of the One Laptop Per Child project explains the project vision and goals.

The One Laptop per Child project’s “Give One, Get One” program has been extended through Dec. 31. According to reports, donations averaged about $2 million a day. On that pace, the OLPC should move about 490,000 units by the end of the year.

The big question many are asking is whether 490,000 units will be enough to rate the non-profit OLPC project a success.

That’s an issue that was raised in this Wall Street Journal article on Saturday. The basis of the WSJ story was this: Negroponte created a great idea but hasn’t hit his $100 mark for the price of the XO (yet) and after three years only 2,000 students in a pilot program have laptops. Some big orders may be on the way. However, Negroponte did rile up the for-profit biggies like Intel and Microsoft enough to bring down the costs of laptops in the developing world. If Negroponte’s project didn’t exist rest assured that Intel’s Classmate PC wouldn’t either.

My take is that Negroponte’s project is a huge success (regardless of the number of laptops he sells) merely because it forced a very important issue (education) to the forefront and got tech giants on board and created positive change.