INSTRUCTIONS Copy this entire Project Proposal Form into an email, then complete all eight fields. Be concise! Include your project title and any countries connected to your project in the subject line of your email. Email to: contributors @ laptop.org 1. PROJECT TITLE & SHIPMENT DETAIL: Name of Project: (WEB-PUBLISHED) AFGHANISTAN HOME SCHOOLS PROJECT BY MTSA Shipping Address You've Verified: c/o Carol Ruth Silver, Attorney at Law 68 Ramona Av San Francisco CA 94103 415-861-5802 * IS FEDEX AND DHL SHIPPABLE (NO POST OFFICE BOXES) YES * INCLUDES A PHONE NUMBER yes * CONTAINS TEAM LEADER'S LEGAL NAME yes Number of Laptops (or other hardware) You Request to Borrow: 9 Loan Length: How Many Months: 12 months or more 2. TEAM PARTICIPANTS: Name(s) and Contact Info: (include all email addresses & phone numbers) Project Manager, MTSA Carol Ruth Silver, Attorney at Law 68 Ramona Av San Francisco 94103 415 861-5802 carol@silverlaw.biz Board Member, MTSA Wahida Noorzad, Attorney at Law Pleasanton, CA 94588 925 600-9991 wnoorzad@hotmail.com IT Manager, MTSA Jim Stockford San Francisco, CA 94122 415 823 4590 jim@well.com Board Member, MTSA Eng. Latif Ahmadi CEO, Afghan Film Kabul, Afghanistan 011-93-949-262-9585 eng_latif_film@yahoo.com Board Member, MTSA Sosan Armon Ariana Afghanistan T-V Orange, CA 92867 201-218-5649 sosanarmon@yahoo.com Teams of more than one person are not required, but favored! Employer and/or School: NGO: Master Teachers by Satellite for Afghanistan (MTSA) www.afghan-satellite-teachers.net Past Experience/Qualifications: Since 2002, Carol Ruth Silver and associates whom she has drawn together into various organizations have been bringing educational opportunities to illiterate women and children in Afghanistan. Past and current projects include: --Widows' Literacy Class, initiated in City of Ghazni, Afghanistan, by Hayward-Ghazni Sister City Committee (H-GSCC); --Teacher Training of high school and elementary school Afghan teachers of science, to introduce them to ways to teach using experiments, rather than rote memorization, by Afghan Friends Network (AFN); --Exchange of children's artwork between first grades in Ghazni and Hayward, by H-GSCC; --Support for tutoring program for girls who are high school graduates, to prepare them to take and pass the Kabul University Entrance Exam, by AFN; --Support "scholarships" for four girls who were admitted to Kabul University but could not find the funds to attend (tuition is free but living expenses are not), AFN. Since 2006, we have been focusing in a project called Master Teachers by Satellite for Afghanistan (MTSA) on the objectives below. 3. OBJECTIVES: Our objective is to bring education to the one-half of Afghan children who are unschooled and for whom there will be no school available, according to the Strategic Plan of the Afghanistan Ministry of Education, before they grow into illiterate adults. MTSA has been the chief voice (if not indeed the only one) advocating for these children that they be provided with technologically available educational solutions, including in particular the OLPC laptop computer. MTSA seeks to deploy the XO laptop in "home schools" or "community schools" in rural areas of Afghanistan. The laptop computers will serve both boys and girls who have otherwise little hope of achieving literacy. Based on the experience in India with computers made available to slum kids without instruction (the Hole in the Wall Project), children in Afghanistan should be provided with the XO laptop even before the government can provide them with a trained teacher and before they can have a bricks and mortar school building. What does the future look like for these children today growing up illiterate in the mountains of Afghanistan? The girls will be married off at 12 or 13 to become illiterate mothers before they have become fully women, while the boys will follow their fathers as hardscrabble farmers or as cannon fodder for local war lords or for the Taliban. OLPC and the XO, with our help and yours, can dramatically change this reality. Project Objectives: (WEB-PUBLISHED) Concrete proposals with defined, measurable outcomes are much more likely to result in a laptop than "it would be cool to play with these and demo them". 4. PLAN OF ACTION: Our Project Director has just returned from Afghanistan where she met with local government agencies and NGO's. The Pilot Project plan is ready to be implemented as follows. a. Identify a set of "home Schools" run by an NGO in an area of Afghanistan safe enough to allow deployment of the OLPC XO laptops. Done: Three home schools in rural Kabul Province are identified. In one of these, for example, the NGO will install solar electricity. The "teacher" will be paid USD $40 per month by the NGO. The teacher will teach two sets of about 20 kids, one AM and one PM, both girls and boys, in a room in her home. b. Train the "teachers", the adult supervisors of the children in the home schools who may or may not be literate and almost for sure are not computer literate. Done: OLPC-Afghanistan and Trust in Education (TIE), the US-based NGO working in Kabul, are ready to train the non-teacher teachers in how to manage the laptops. c. Get the laptops. Working on it: Some 50 laptops have been promised to MTSA by OLPC-Afghanistan. They expect to get these 50 laptops from the shipment of 5,000 OLPC XO laptops designated for existing public schools in Afghanistan, under the agreement which created OLPC-Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the full complement of 5000 laptops did not arrive in Afghanistan yet, and so the 50 laptops have not been made available to MTSA for the home schools. We are working on this, and also working on getting the laptops in other ways. d. While working on the home schools deployment of the XO, MTSA is also working on producing a Pashto or Dari (Farsi) literacy program for the XO called Mullah Nasrudin Literacy Adventure Video Game. Developers for Sugar are being solicited to work on it, and one guy in Afghanistan is writing the code while one of our Board members in Afghanistan is supposed to be creating the video images for it. e. We need the laptops requested in this Proposal to provide to our members working both in Afghanistan and in the US on these projects. We want to create new ways to use the XO, for example by utilizing USB sticks with Sugar and the apps on them to extend the number of kids who can share one laptop. We also need to give our volunteers and personnel the opportunity to be sufficiently familiar with the XO to be able to demonstrate it to potential funding sources. 5. NEEDS: Why is this project needed? Literacy is good. Locally? Female literacy rate in Afghanistan is 14%. In the greater OLPC/Sugar community? What we do will be replicable in other countries. Outside the community? Yes. Why can't this project be done in emulation using non-XO machines? The XO is the core vision of this project, as of OLPC in general: we need the rugged, low electricity, unique machine, with the Sugar software which includes collaboration among kids, etc. for remote, rugged regions. Why are you requesting the number of machines you are asking for? We need to provide two to the filming group in Kabul, two to the fundraising group in San Francisco, four for testing and demonstrations, and one to set up a power point slide show for the Afghan events which occur regularly. Will you consider (1) salvaged/rebuilt or (2) damaged XO Laptops? Rebuilt is OK if they are reliable, but not damaged, as we do not have capability to fix. 6. SHARING DELIVERABLES: Project URL where you'll report specific ongoing progress: www.afghan-satellite-teachers.net. Please web-publish this entire completed proposal, removing any sections affecting your personal privacy. Ask if you want help! How will you convey tentative ideas and results back to the OLPC/Sugar community, prior to completion? We will use OLPC email list as well as post reports on our MTSA web site. How will the final fruits of your labor be distributed to children or community members worldwide? By collaborating with Afghan OLPC and educational groups and through OLPC News, our MTSA web site, and the OLPC-SF broadcast list. Will your work have any possible application or use outside our community? Absolutely. If yes, how will these people be reached? We hope to ramp up after the first Pilot and eventually reach the 4.5 million Afghan children presently growing up illiterate. Have you investigated working with nearby XO Lending Libraries or Project Groups? This application was suggested and is supported by OLPC-San Francisco, Prof. Sameer Verma, and OLPC-Afghanistan, CEO Mike Dawson. 7. QUALITY / MENTORING: Would your Project benefit from Support, Documentation and/or Testing people? Support -- we need volunteers to do administration, fundraising, logistics, and in Afghanistan, when the security situation allows it, we need Farsi and Pashto speakers. Teachers' input into Usability? Yes. How will you promote your work? Energetically. Can we help you with an experienced mentor from the OLPC/Sugar community? (WEB-PUBLISHED) Yes, particularly in Washington, D.C., to prepare our major fundraising effort after the Pilot Project is completed in about a year. If YES: specify the kind of Ongoing Mentoring that will benefit you most. Fundraising and administration. If NO: specify who will help you share your progress, creations, and results. 8. TIMELINE (START TO FINISH): Please include a Proposed timeline for your Project life-cycle: (this can be in the form of Month 1, Month 2, etc rather than specific dates) The Month of July, 2009, = Month No. 1. Home Schools in rural Kabul Province -- identified. Sources of laptop computers -- identified but not yet obtained. USB sticks for Sugar on a stick -- 100 delivered to OLPC Afghanistan. Month 2,3,4: Work with OLPC-Afghanistan to try to get the laptops for the home schools. Try to see if the training can occur, even though the laptops are not yet available. Get ready to install the solar panels so they will be ready to go as soon as the laptops are available. Complete the Assessment questionnaire to be administered to the kids before they get the laptops. Prepare the USB sticks to be distributed with the laptops, to allow use by more than one kid of each laptop. Train the "teachers" on how to use the sticks. By end of 2009: Have 3 home schools working with the XO laptops. Month 6,7,8: Administer the assessment questionnaire again (quarterly) to track progress. Prepare proposals, based on our successful pilot, to various funding agencies, asking them for large grants to provide the OLPC XO laptop to home schools in more than 5,000 rural villages in Afghanistan. Month 9,10,11: Administer the assessment questionnaire again. Evaluate the learning progress of the kids. Develop a plan for next period of time for same students, and for a set of new students. More proposals. Month 12: Write report, distribute. Decide next steps. Include a couple milestones, even if tentative. Get and distribute OLPC XO laptops. Train "teachers". Assess kids for literacy. More proposals. Specify how you prefer to communicate your ongoing progress and obstacles! Email [X ] I agree to pass on the laptop(s) to a local OLPC group or other interested contributors in case I do not have need for the laptop(s) anymore or in case my project progress stalls.