Give a laptop, get a laptop: OLPC

My family and I were so excited when we received our laptop from One Laptop Per Child almost a year ago. I just love bringing it to the library, coffeeshop, jury duty waiting room, or other public venue because people always ask questions about it and give me the opportunity to talk about the fantastic machine and organization. People are always so intrigued when I demonstrate my computer, but they're often a bit disappointed when I tell them that they can no longer order the machine. Well cheer up folks, now's your chance!

To all those who missed out the first time, Give one, Get one from One Laptop Per Child is back! Starting November 17, you can order the great XO Laptop and ensure that a child in the economically developing world receives one too. It's a great deal for your family and another one.

So visit laptop.org to learn more and amazon.com/xo to order your XO laptop today. I'll look for you in the mesh network!

Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking. - Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (1741-1794)

IM or email for the greater good.

Hotmail has a great program about which I am happy to spread the word. You can raise money for your favorite charitable causes simply by using Windows Live™ Hotmail® and Windows Live Messenger (instant messaging) as you normally do. When you open or register your account with the i’m™ Initiative, MSN will donate a portion of their advertising revenue to the cause of your choice, every time you use their service.

This is a great way to make what you do everyday a little more meaningful. The more you email, the more your IM, the more you contribute. Thanks for the tip, Ingrid!

“Reject hatred without hating.” - Mary Baker Eddy

Use social media for good.

Some folks are really into social networks. Although I'm not too busy on Facebook, MySpace, and some other more popular ones, I do have three networks on Ning, including the XO Users Group. So when I first heard about SocialVibe I was a little curious.

SocialVibe is a social networking site with a social entrepreneurship twist. When you build a page on SocialVibe, you select a sponsor and a cause. Then every time you connect with friends, add photos, add to your profile, link your page to Myspace, Facebook and the like your sponsor donates money to the charitable cause of your choice. I'm sponsored by Mac (on whose computers I do all my work and blogging - except when I'm on my XO) and my cause is Donors Choose.

So click below to visit my page at SocialVibe. Your click will contribute to Donors Choose. And if you like, build your own page, get a sponsor, and start earning money for your favorite cause.

"Truth never damages a cause that is just." -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

Join the Carnival for Change - Booth 7.

Welcome to the Carnival for Change where we explore the web for interesting items relating to social justice, health, education, and opportunity.

* Are you a woman blogger? If so, check out the BlogHer '08 National Meeting in San Francisco, July 18-20. Short notice, I know. If you can't make it to San Francisco, perhaps you can attend the regional 1-day meetings in October. They'll be held in Boston, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Nashville, Greenboro, and New Orleans.

* Are you a woman entrepreneur? If so, check out the The Power of Yin live, interactive webcasts. The three fall broadcasts feature "women angel investors discussing society’s greatest challenges and answering questions from women entrepreneurs about building the socially responsible companies of the future." They're free!

* Alanna Shaikh of Blood and Milk offers this interesting post on the concept of positive deviance and it's role in development. Deviating from the norm is often a good thing!

* I've written before about the XO Laptop from One Laptop Per Child. For those of us who are lucky enough to have one of these supercool, ultrafunctional machines, I've started the XO Users Group - For users and fans of the XO Laptop. Do you have an XO? Then stop on over and join.

* Do you blog about social change? If so, you may want to contribute to the Changebloggers Wiki, conceived of and executed by the good folks at Have Fun * Do Good and Social Butterfly for Change.

* Learn about World Heritage Sites and maybe win a trip to visit on by taking the Friends of World Heritage Adventure Quiz. This is inspired by, of all things, Indiana Jones. Happy trekking!

* I needed inspiration for the book this time so I took key words from each of the items in today's Carnival and put them in Amazon search. Out popped Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. Enjoy!


Thanks for visiting the Carnival for Change! If you'd like space at the next booth, send your items to me with "Carnival for Change" in the subject. See you next time! In the meantime, subscribe to So What Can I Do (see sidebar) or follow us on Twitter (@sowhatcanido).

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.” - Joseph Campbell

Publish in open access journals.

I spend a good deal of my life reading and writing academic papers. In the olden days (which weren't so long ago), that meant going to the university library, sometimes to the basement or archives to search for particular volumes among shelves and shelves of books and journals. But school libraries can't carry all scholarly journals. Interlibrary loan eased the problem in the past, but the internet offers an opportunity to really solve the problem. Enter open access journals.

Open access journals are scholarly academic journals that are freely and openly available on the internet. The reader is able to access these journals without restrictions, though some some journals charge authors a fee to publish. These journals are developing the same levels of quality, prestige, and copyright protection as more traditional journals, and there is evidence to suggest that publishing in open access journals can increase impact and citation rates. Great news for any academic!

I recognize that not everyone has access to university libraries, and that not all libraries have the financial resources to grant access to expensive and numerous scholarly journals. For those reasons, I have decided to prioritize publication in open access journals. I like to think that my writing is of value to many kinds of people, not just those who have easy access to wealthy academic libraries. It really makes sense when you consider that taxpayers fund so much research. I'm not the only one who thinks so. In 2002, George Soros' Open Society Institute launched the Budapest Open Access Initiative to promote open access journals and publication.

With thousands of peer reviewed open access journals available around the world, there is bound to be a journal in your field and language. And if you see a need for a new open journal, here's a guide to starting your own open access journal.

So are you all jazzed about open access journals? Ready to publish? Check out these resources to find the publication and information you need:

* Directory of Open Access Journals aims to "increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content." They cover 3353 journals in all languages all over the world. Journals must use peer or editorial review.

* Open J-Gate is "an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain." The database indexes "4375 open access journals, with links to full text at Publisher sites." They include both peer-reviewed journals and industry and professional journals in English.

* Open Access Directory is "a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship, maintained by the OA community at large." It's a wiki so everyone can contribute.

So you can see, there are lots of ways to promote open access. Here's my first OA paper. I look forward to reading yours!


"Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them." - Suzanne Necker

Build a website.

Everyday, more and more people get online. Not just to use email or read an online newspaper, but often to establish an online presence. For example Kwadjo and I both have websites as do many of our relatives and friends. Building a site doesn't have to be hard, but services like Squidoo make it much easier. As they say, "Everyone’s an expert on something!" And here's the kicker, a portion of the money your website makes will be donated to charity.

Squidoo makes money from ads and affiliate links. We give 5% of what we earn, right off the top, to charity. We keep 45% to cover our overhead and stuff. That leaves 50%. That goes to charity or to the people who build the pages. And we leave it up to you to choose one or the other.

You can donate your revenue to any of over 70 nonprofits. If you run a nonprofit consider registering your organization so Squidoo webmaster can donate money to your organization. You may even want to build a page for your organization. What a great way to develop an online presence and make money for your favorite cause! What will you write about? There are sites for selling items, political activism, social activism, and much much more. No wonder over 40,000 people are building sites at Squidoo. See you online!

"Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Play video games.

I don't think I've played a video game since Atari tennis, but they've improved dramatically since Atari and I know there are many others who really enjoy them. Some of these programers and gamers are interested in social change as well, and they've combined their skills and interests to create games for change. Check out some of these games:

* PeaceMaker allows you to "experience the joy of bringing peace to the Middle East or the agony of plunging the region into disaster." It is available in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Asaf Lubin of Israel writes "I played the game all night last night and found it brilliant and thought-provoking. The concept is of sheer genius and the execution was professional and creative... simply out of this world" and Terry Bowers of the US adds "(My son) has learned more about the conflicts that have been plaguing the Middle East in three hours than I have been able to teach him in many years."

* A Force More Powerful – the Game of Nonviolent Strategy is "the first and only interactive teaching tool in the field of nonviolent conflict." Red Herring writes “It’s like political jujitsu.”

* Climate Challenge is "a game where you are president of the European Nations. You must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office."

* Darfur is Dying, from MTV, is "is a viral video game for change that provides a window into the experience of the 2.5 million refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan. Players must keep their refugee camp functioning in the face of possible attack by Janjaweed militias."

* Pax Warrior is an "interactive documentary" that "weaves the tragic story of the UN experience in Rwanda placing the user, first person, in the shoes of a UN Commander trying to maintain peace." They need beta testers!

* Food Force, from the World Food Programme, presents this scenario: "A major crisis has developed in the Indian Ocean, on the island of Sheylan. We’re sending in a new team to step up the World Food Programme’s presence there and help feed millions of hungry people."

* Re-Mission was developed for young people with cancer. "Players pilot a nanobot named Roxxi as she travels through the bodies of fictional cancer patients destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections, and managing side effects associated with cancer and cancer treatment."

* Ayiti: The Cost of Life help the player answer the question "What is it like to live in poverty, struggling every day to stay healthy, keep out of debt, and get educated?" It's a project of Microsoft and Unicef.

Many of these games include resources to help you make a real world difference in the situations on which the games are modeled. And player can enjoy gaming while they learn skills and information that is useful away from the screen. So click over, download, and play some video games for fun and a better future. Enjoy!

"I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone." -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)

Read out loud.

We're generally taught to read to ourselves soon after we learn how to read. But there are still many reasons to read out loud, to your children for example. Or for those who are blind or have other disabilities that limit print reading ability. Audiobooks, podcasts, and the like are very helpful, but what about reading text books? The newspaper? A letter from a friend? A menu at a restaurant? Thankfully there are many services available that provide audio versions of printed text, but they all need volunteers to run. Here's how you can help:

* Readers read out loud, narrating the text and describing any visual elements like graphs, charts, and equations. Specialized readers proficient in math, science, finance, accounting, computer science, foreign languages, and other technical areas are often in short supply. So if you have those skills, consider reading out loud.

* Directors guide the reader, operate recording equipment and make corrections to the recorded material when necessary.

* Editors review the audio files and help with production of the final version.

* Scanners use the internet to submit text, modify files and prepare them for audio or Braille publication.

These are just a few of the many ways you can help. Excited? Great! Now here are three organizations you can contact to volunteer or obtain services:

--> Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic is a national nonprofit organization in existence for over 60 years. They provide digitally recorded textbooks "in every subject area and grade level from kindergarten through graduate studies". They have studios nationwide. Contact the national headquarters at 800-803-7201 for more information or visit rfbd.org.

--> Read This To Me is a free reading service for blind and low vision people. It "allows blind and low-vision people (clients) to have printed documents read to them over the phone. All a person needs is a phone line and a fax machine (no computer is required.)" Volunteers only need a few minutes a day and the willingness to make a long-distance phone call. Learn more about volunteering with Read This To Me.

--> Bookshare.org prepares books in audio and Braille formats. The need volunteers to scan books and prepare books for publication on Bookshare. All you need in an internet connection.

Remember you can also make donations, and spread the word about these great opportunities and services. Organizations like the International Association of Audio Information Services have other resources for books, newspapers and other materials available in Braille and other formats. They need volunteers too! Talking books can make such a meaningful difference in a person's life. Happy reading and happy listening!

"He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses." -Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)

Give a laptop, get a laptop: One Laptop per Child.

This just in from Neha Yellurkar:

Hey Karama,

I'm an avid reader of So What Can I Do? I know you are always looking for ways to enact social change so I think you and your readers will be as excited about this as I was. OLPC, One Laptop Per Child, a non profit organization based in Cambridge, MA, set out a few years ago to design and build affordable and easy to use computers for children all over the world. So today they are announcing that between Nov. 12 and Nov. 26, consumers can participate in the Give 1, Get 1 program. Every time anyone from the USA or Canada orders an OLPC xo laptop during this two-week period, another laptop will be donated to a child in a developing country. The total cost for both computers is $400, a cost that allows a person here to have a hand in providing a valuable resource and a very fun educational tool for a deserving child. Added bonus: Any order placed during this period is assured to reach by Christmas so the laptops you get and give will be great gifts!

The Give 1, Get 1 program was announced this morning on Good Morning America so for more information you can check out the ABC News!

For more details you can take a peek at the official release on BusinessWire or the XO giving site at: XOgiving.org.

Thanks Neha! I had heard about One Laptop Per Child on 60 Minutes but didn't know about the Give 1, Get 1 program. What a neat idea! If you agree:

* Visit XOgiving.org.
* Order your computer between November 12 and November 26, 2007. UPDATE: Extended to December 31, 2007. Order now!
* Get your snazzy new laptop computer.
* Give a child a computer and access to the information and opportunities on the internet.
* Consider donating your computer to a children's school or educational nonprofit or service agency in your community.

What a way to help close the digital divide, in the US and around the world!

“Computing is not about computers any more. It is about living.” - Nicholas Negroponte