Tuesday, November 20, 2007

One Laptop per Child Foundation, Invest your money and your time - OLPC Foundation

One Laptop per Child Foundation, Invest your money and your time - OLPC Foundation

I've been following this since it's inception and really believe in it's mission and potential.

Perhaps you know people who would want to participate?


(From photographer David Reicks)
Here's a Win-Win-Win for the Holidays.

A child in a developing country gets a laptop, you get one too, plus
you get a charitable donation and a nice freebie for when you travel.

I don't know about you, but I'd been eyeing the XO laptop since I
heard about it earlier this year. When I found the reminder email
from the One Laptop Per Child foundation in my "junk box" this
morning, I decided to take the plunge after seeing the sweetened deal.

The One Laptop Per Child education project has a "Give One, Get One"
program running from November 12 to the 26th. You pay $399 plus
shipping, and one of the XO laptops will be sent to a child in
developing country, and one of them is yours to keep (along with a
$200 charitable contribution).

The clincher was seeing that T-mobile sweetened the deal by offering
a free year of T-Mobile Hotspot internet access to people that
contribute (not just for the XO laptop, but any wireless device).
Since I'll be logging a few miles this next year for the SAA photo
metadata project, I think this makes it a Win-Win-Win! (if that's
possible). The cost of a year of Hotspot access is nearly the same as
what you are spending for the whole deal, so hard to see how you can go wrong.

Anyway, if you are interested, here's the link.


If you aren't interested in keeping your personal laptop, think of it as a
stock photo prop, or give it to one of your kids, a niece or nephew,
or other deserving child you know.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Here My Home Once Stood - A Holocaust Memoir

Here My Home Once Stood - A Holocaust Memoir

I got a letter last week from a good friend, Phil Shpilberg and, in an effort to help promote this amazing story and labor of love, I post this.

Dear Friends and Family,

In a week, my grandfather, Moyshe Rekhtman, will turn 80 years old. This coincides with the completion of my manuscript of his memoir, Here My Home Once Stood. For the past three years, I have passionately translated his Russian audio recordings, written and edited the story of his escape from two concentration camps and subsequent struggle to survive. As an almost blind 14-year-old, my grandfather refused to die in Nazi-occupied Ukraine, where 1.5 million other Jews perished.

I hope to publish this work soon. Until that time I would like to share excerpts of it with you via my blog

http://hmhos.blogspot.com/


If it moves you, please subscribe to the blog and tell others who may be interested. And of course, if you can help me connect with a publisher or agent, I would be grateful.

I hope that Here My Home Once Stood can, in some small way, stop future human suffering. Any proceeds from the project will go to that end.

Thank you,
Phil Shpilberg