/ 14 March 2008

Life-changing laptops handed to Kliptown kids

”Just because we are poor doesn’t mean our brains can’t function properly,” said Zandile Gamede (16) at a laptop handover ceremony in Kliptown, Soweto, on Thursday.

”Julia and Hennah saw that about us. We are believers and we also want bright futures,” added the teenager.

When Julia and Hennah Weber — sisters aged 15 and 17 respectively — visited Kliptown for the first time in 2005 on a school trip from Boston in the United States, they made their way to the Kliptown Youth Programme where, they say, they met some of the most welcoming people they had ever seen.

”They were so lively that we felt the need to stay in touch with these people,” said Julia this week at the handover ceremony.

The Weber sisters said they had never seen such vigour among young people who had so little, so they decided to try to get them laptops to help them improve their lives.

”The amazing thing is that these children didn’t have much; they lived in homes with no electricity or running water, yet they still managed to be happy — and that definitely inspired us,” said Hennah. Her sister agreed: ”There is already a great sense of community here, so we thought that the laptops would help them be part of an even bigger international community.”

Their father, Larry Weber, works closely with the non-profit Information and Communications Technology Company, which is responsible for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative.

OLPC has distributed 100 000 laptops to schoolchildren in Uruguay, and this is the first time that the initiative has come to South Africa. Its goal is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

The distinctive laptops cost about $100 (R780) each to manufacture. They are the size of a textbook and lighter than a lunchbox. They can operate using different power sources, such as car batteries where electricity is not available; they can also be solar- or foot-powered.

”This company has given close to one million laptops to children in developing countries around the world and when my daughters came with the suggestion of bringing the project to South Africa, I saw how heartfelt the idea was and I convinced OLPC to come to South Africa,” Larry said.

However, it has taken two years for the project to get off the ground

The laptops come pre-loaded with educational software, such as South African textbooks and matric set works including Maru, Julius Caesar and Macbeth. ”The South African Department of Education was helpful in suggesting the educational material to go into the laptops because that is really what this is about,” Larry said.

The laptops can connect to the internet using their own mesh network out of the box. Each machine is a full-time wireless router, and children using the laptops can connect to each other’s machines as well as the world wide web.

Excitement

The laptops were handed over to the excited recipients at the Roman Catholic Centre in Kliptown on Thursday. The sense of excitement was palpable; the children were clapping and running around. Members of the community came to watch as they danced and sang to show their appreciation to the Weber family.

The children — all members of the Kliptown Youth Programme — were overjoyed knowing that they would own such technology at no cost.

Kliptown, to the south of Johannesburg, is home to about 14 000 people. It has no libraries or schools. ”We have to go to other neighbourhoods to find libraries, and we all go to schools that are far from home because there are no schools here,” said Zandile Gamede.

”I think that my grades at school will improve very much because now I don’t have to bother people to help me with my homework. I can just find things out from the net,” said Jabulile Madi (11), a grade-four pupil at Nancefield Primary School.

”When I grow up I want to be a pilot, and I know that this laptop will help me because I always see on TV [how] pilots use computers to drive the planes,” she said, her eyes shining.

Lerato Modise (11) said that she was overwhelmed at the thought of chatting online.

”I will have friends from overseas who I, maybe one day, will visit. Who knows, I might even meet Beyoncé and Rihanna … my sister told me that the internet does that,” she said, laughing.

Collen Tshazi (18), who wants to be an entrepreneur when he finishes school, said the laptop would help him with business ideas. ”I will look up how other people started their business and hopefully I will get ideas on how to start my own business.”

All Nobulali Senteni (9) wanted to do was to play video games on her laptop, because ”my mother won’t let me play games with her phone”. She said that she didn’t know what she wanted to do when she was finished with school, but ”I promise I that will let you know as soon as I know”.

The director of the Kliptown Youth Programme, Thulani Madondo, said that the programme will have ”laptop days” once a week when those who took ownership of the computers will bring them to the centre to share with others. The programme has close to 250 members; therefore, not every member was able to receive a laptop.

”We acknowledge that the laptops are owned by the children whose names were called out, but the aim of our group is to empower each other, so we will have days where the laptop owners will bring them and we can all share and learn computer skills,” he said.

There were 80 members of the youth programme when the Weber family offered the laptop donations. The group asked for 100 laptops, not knowing that by the time the machines arrived, it would have grown much larger.

OLPC spent between R118 000 and R158 000 on the Kliptown project, but Larry Weber said that the amount was ”nothing, if it can change a life of a child”.

”We want to start from the bottom up. As the saying goes, you can give a man a fish to eat for one day but if you teach him how to fish, then he will have fish forever. This is relevant in this case because Kliptown is one of the poorest areas in South Africa, but if the children here are empowered, then they will be able to empower themselves in the future,” he said.