Can make the difference
The biggest and most important aim for every state is to care for its people. This also includes offering every child the eduction it needs, for they are the future. While we’re arguing about results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in order to ensure an even better education for our children, many hundreds of children in developing countries cannot even go to school or their learning conditions are so catastrophic that they do not really learn anything at all. There’s a major lack of money, equipment and professional personnel, a vicious circle that cannot be stopped even by the most committed work of aid organisations.

If we want to fight this abject poverty in those countries, thus offering everyone in this world fair and equal possibilities, we need special ideas apart from regular projects, in order to let that huge mass of children gain access to knowledge. If they can learn how to teach themselves new things, they can participate in their country’s future. A project called “One Laptop per Child” is an example for this: Its aim is to equip all indigent children on this planet with a laptop, which is specially tailored for those children’s needs and the conditions in developing countries. The really special thing about them is that their production is as cheap as 100$ per unit and that it is freely programmable, so that each pupil or student can adjust the computer to their own needs, maybe in cooperation with their teachers and fellow-students.

Many countries have already indicated interest in these computers, some laptops are even already in use. The more children of this world own such a laptop, the sooner whole countries may escape their bottomless pit of education. This way, their children can look forward to a safe, self-determined future. A lack of education creates dependence – everywhere in the world. However, while only very few cannot visit school in industrial nations, it is simply reality in developing countries not to go to school. The catastrophic educational situation in those countries is actually one of the main reasons for their – not only financial – dependence on industrial nations.

Isn’t it a symbol of humanity to offer young, hopeful people the means to lead a beautiful and free life? We claim this right to education and self-determination for our own children, so why not for all the other children in our world? It is our empathy that makes us human. We have the ability to look over the rim of the tea cup of our privileged world, and what we see are young people who might never have the chance to escape their dependence on relief supplies from foreign countries, just because they have no money to afford proper education.

If only one laptop per child can greatly improve their prospects, then what are we waiting for?