One Laptop Per Child Extends Special 'Give One Get One' Offer

Buying a $188 computer in the U.S. and Canada and donating a second one to a child in a developing country is the deal extended last week by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program.

The "Give One, Get One" program will now run through December 31, according to OLPC, a nonprofit spinoff from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Originally offered for just a few days, the extension is meant to give groups more time to organize so that they can collectively participate, said Mary Lou Jepsen, chief technology officer for the nonprofit.

"Through 'Give One, Get One,' many more individuals and groups are banding with us to try to make this dream a reality," Jepsen said. "Together, we can truly transform the world by giving education to those children in the developing world that have little or none. Education is the only real way to change things."

Jepsen was inspired and mentored by the late Steve Benton, who was director of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies and a professor of Media Arts and Sciences. Benton, widely acknowledged as the inventor of the rainbow hologram, told Jepsen that "the dreams that succeed are the ones that get the most people to join and participate," she said. Jepsen was the featured speaker at the 2006 SPIE Awards Banquet, and is one of 23 women scientists and engineers profiled in the 2008 SPIE Women in Optics Monthly Planner.

Source: Spie.org

Learn more at: http://www.laptopgiving.org/