Sunday, August 05, 2007

Darfur

As a local Darfurian, my goal might be to simply escape the region, visit later. This is how many people have historically improved their lives: by moving. North Americans are especially familiar with this strategy.

The global NGO community shouldn't buy the fiction that only "political prisoners" deserve something called "asylum" (relief from suffering). Rather, once you're born a human being on Planet Earth, freedom of movement is your birthright, a freedom perhaps curtailed as you grow older and break others' rules, but why does simply being born in Darfur merit a life sentence to that region?

This is your planet, as much as the next guy's.

I think Darfur represents an ideal set of challenges for OLPC and P4E people to walk their various talks.

Add wireless using satellite, hand out some laptops (not just to kids). They're designed to be self-teaching i.e. this is not a "literacy first, then computers" model, but a "literacy through computers" model, combined with peer teaching ala the South African design.

Portable movie theaters, for showing documentaries about the great outer world outside of Darfur (plus the occasional blockbuster) would also be a part of this program, though individual XO screens pretty much serve this same purpose (like that little screen on the seat back in front of you, on a fully equipped Airbus).