Buy a laptop, send a laptop to Africa

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php

For $399 you get one of the fabled $100 laptops (final price ended up at $188), a years worth of TMobile hotspot and they send a similar laptop to a child in a developing nation. $200 of this is tax deductible, btw!

GO BUY! You only have 9 days left on this. This'd make an awesome christmas present.

Reviews/articles:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1206
http://bc.tech.coop/blog/071112.html

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

I guess I'm the only one here who a) loves the idea of this 2for1 deal and b) would love to have one for himself ?

[Truant]

I think it's an awesome idea!

I have no money atm!

[rhyae]

[cadalano]

i'm not 100% behind their mission- Not so much because I think it would be a bad idea, but more of a potential misallocation of a lot of the money that I set aside for this sort of thing. Would rather see some solid, positive results before I put the $ there as opposed to other charities. Maybe on their next drive I'll feel better about it

[Winnow]

i'm not 100% behind their mission- Not so much because I think it would be a bad idea, but more of a potential misallocation of a lot of the money that I set aside for this sort of thing. Would rather see some solid, positive results before I put the $ there as opposed to other charities. Maybe on their next drive I'll feel better about it

I was going to write something like that earlier but I don't always want to be the asshole to point out the bad side of things.

Plus it won't run Newsleecher.

I'm curious to get some real world results from this in a year or two...not just a short video clip of a skinny kid with flies buzzing around them while typing on one. I hope there are some success stories to follow.

One of the more impressive things I've seen is the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital that flies around the world, operating on as many individuals as they can, removing cataracts.

Some info here:

http://www.orbis.org.uk/bins/content_pa ... 059&lang=1

There's a documentary on this that's outstanding.

Edit: Something's wrong with the VV database/server for sure. Very slow registering posts.

[Boogahz]

What about: Improve your vocabulary and donate rice to the UN World Food Program?

http://freerice.com/


I wouldn't have found this link if I had not been filling out predictions on Predictify.com! <--shameless plug

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

Here's a novel idea for Africe, fight for a government who doesn't waste the billions of dollars that gets sent to them by charities and buy your own fucking laptops.

[Drolgin Steingrinder]

Here's a novel idea for Africe, fight for a government who doesn't waste the billions of dollars that gets sent to them by charities and buy your own fucking laptops.

Were you born this moronic or did you have an unfortunate lobotomy incident in your teens?

You've degraded into a sad sad state of trolldom that even Cartalas would be embarassed about. You really ought to go away, find yourself a nice cabin in the mountains and jerk off over your cache of guns for 30 years. Oh, and for a side bonus to this, your children might be able to find a nice surrogate father who isn't a xenophobic, myopic and moronic asshole.

[noel]

Here's a novel idea for Africe, fight for a government who doesn't waste the billions of dollars that gets sent to them by charities and buy your own fucking laptops.

Were you born this moronic or did you have an unfortunate lobotomy incident in your teens?

You've degraded into a sad sad state of trolldom that even Cartalas would be embarassed about. You really ought to go away, find yourself a nice cabin in the mountains and jerk off over your cache of guns for 30 years. Oh, and for a side bonus to this, your children might be able to find a nice surrogate father who isn't a xenophobic, myopic and moronic asshole.

Spot on.

To the members of the international community that post here: I apologize for Americans like Midnyte that you might encounter in your travels both real and virtual. If you've never travelled through the US, it might be difficult to imagine how impossibly big and diverse it is. Unfortunately, there's a small subset of Americans like Midnyte that feel as he does, but I assure you it's the ignorant minority (of which there are many ignorant (non-race-based) minorities). Please don't judge all Americans by Midnyte's brain-dead ignorance.

[laneela]

Here's a novel idea for Africe, fight for a government who doesn't waste the billions of dollars that gets sent to them by charities and buy your own fucking laptops.

The sheer ignorant evil that comes out of you often disgusts me, but you reached new lows with this one.

[Funkmasterr]

I'm not exactly defending mid's comment, but I'm sick and tired of everyone expecting that everyone else has sympathy for and cries out against everything the 3rd world countries do/don't have. Call it whatever you want, I'm sick and fucking tired of a new fucking sob story every day, I'm plain not interested. Besides, I would rather see something done about the MAJOR issues in our own country before I worry about someone else's problems. If the people of Africa didn't fuck like jack rabbits and spread AIDS at an alarming rate they wouldn't have half the issues they do.

[noel]

I'm not exactly defending mid's comment, but I'm sick and tired of everyone expecting that everyone else has sympathy for and cries out against everything the 3rd world countries do/don't have. Call it whatever you want, I'm sick and fucking tired of a new fucking sob story every day, I'm plain not interested. Besides, I would rather see something done about the MAJOR issues in our own country before I worry about someone else's problems. If the people of Africa didn't fuck like jack rabbits and spread AIDS at an alarming rate they wouldn't have half the issues they do.

Seriously... how small is the world you live in?

Which 'MAJOR issues' facing the United States are you most concerned about?

[Funkmasterr]

I'm not exactly defending mid's comment, but I'm sick and tired of everyone expecting that everyone else has sympathy for and cries out against everything the 3rd world countries do/don't have. Call it whatever you want, I'm sick and fucking tired of a new fucking sob story every day, I'm plain not interested. Besides, I would rather see something done about the MAJOR issues in our own country before I worry about someone else's problems. If the people of Africa didn't fuck like jack rabbits and spread AIDS at an alarming rate they wouldn't have half the issues they do.

Seriously... how small is the world you live in?

Which 'MAJOR issues' facing the United States are you most concerned about?

When we don't have homeless people, sick people, disease problems of our own to deal with - then we can start helping other people. Pick any single issue you want, if we have any issue with it ourselves we should not be helping others before us. We can't be Jesus to the whole fucking world, even if it's expected of us.

The only time any other country says or does anything for us (for the most part) is when we do/say something they don't like. So why should I give a fuck about a single one of them? Answer is: there is no reason, which is precisely why I don't.

[cadalano]

what domestic programs do you provide support for?

[Funkmasterr]

what domestic programs do you provide support for?

I volunteer at a local food shelf, I donate at least once a year (money and clothing) to the Vietnam Veterans - and I usually give about 100 dollars or so to the salvation army guys ringing bells outside of stores and such during the holidays.
I think I do a fair amount to help, nice try though - I see precisely what you were trying to do there.

[cadalano]

no, i was just asking. naturally if you were being overly defensive you could, and would, just make up anything you wanted so what point would there be to arguing?

[Sueven]

I think there's a little bit of value in what Midnyte says:

Giving money to Africa is not necessarily helpful. If that money ends up in the hands of dictators, thugs, strongmen, warlords... then all we're doing is fueling those repressive regimes and pushing off their collapse and the emergence of homegrown solutions.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't give aid to Africa, it means that we should give aid in ways which directly benefit and empower the people of Africa, as opposed to giving it to larger governmental entities to distribute as they see fit.

Microfinance is a great example of a much more beneficial sort of aid. This program (although I'm unsure on the details) sounds similar-- you're directly empowering individual Africans by giving them access to technology they didn't previously have.

Foreign aid has been bad for Africa in some ways, because our foreign aid has unwittingly financed and supported dictators and murderers. Blaming ordinary Africans for the fact that we have empowered murderers is ignorant and unfortunate. However, rethinking our methods of aid distribution would be a boon to ourselves and to Africa.

[Bagar-]

no, i was just asking. naturally if you were being overly defensive you could, and would, just make up anything you wanted so what point would there be to arguing?

Precisely

[Winnow]

The problem with a lot of people that donate is that they really are out to make themselves feel better rather than actually paying attention to where the contribution is going or how it's used. This falls along the same lines as someone that donates 10% of their income to a church and thinks they're doing something good. Both of those can be for selfish reasons whether they think of it that way or not.

This isn't directed at anyone that's posted on this thread. Don't get all excited and think I'm accusing [you] of doing this. I'm saying this happens more than it should and is the reason why we have some pretty fucked up and wasteful charities because people cut checks and don't look into the details.

Bring back the [you]!

[Funkmasterr]

The problem with a lot of people that donate is that they really are out to make themselves feel better rather than actually paying attention to where the contribution is going or how it's used. This falls along the same lines as someone that donates 10% of their income to a church and thinks they're doing something good. Both of those can be for selfish reasons whether they think of it that way or not.

This isn't directed at anyone that's posted on this thread. Don't get all excited and think I'm accusing [you] of doing this. I'm saying this happens more than it should and is the reason why we have some pretty fucked up and wasteful charities because people cut checks and don't look into the details.

Bring back the [you]!

Right, when I worked at Lunds I had 5-10% of each of my paychecks going to the united way just because it sounded nice. i later found out that almost none of the money you donate goes to actual people that need it, but instead goes to the fucking execs at United Way. So I stopped donating my money to them or to any other organization without knowing how it works first.

The sad thing is that so many people are exactly as you described winnow, they have no clue what or where their money is going to, just that they are donating to charity. If everyone took the time to look into the details, organizations like the United Way wouldn't even be around anymore.

[noel]

Just an FYI, there are a bunch of websites that rate charities based on how they handle the money/goods that are donated to them. Interesting trivia fact... the Lance Armstrong Foundation is actually rated higher than the American Cancer Society for putting the money where it's stated to go and managing the money they get.

[Knarlz]

"Why the '$100 laptop' project is under siege.....

The dream of cheap computers in the hands of millions of poor children is becoming a reality, though not exactly as its proponents imagined. For-profit competitors snatched the idea and have run with it."


http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/In ... Siege.aspx