The Minister of Education

We just had our meeting with the Minister of Education and it went very well. We found out, during the meeting embarrassingly enough, our school our contact at STeP UP recommended was a politically charged move and we have since moved to a different school. One main drawback from the meeting is that the minister didn’t want the students to take them home for fear that their families would sell the laptops. This will be a focus of ours to convince the community that it is in their best interests not to sell the laptops and to convince the community that by buying the laptops they are hurting students.

Left to Right: Chika, Corey, Danielle, Ashley, The Minister of Education, Paul, Myself

After our meeting we visited our school and determined that the fifth grade class has 45 students and the sixth grade class has 40 students. The school has power and we have word from the ISP on island that they will provide internet at the school. We are looking to saturate the two classes and recycle the laptops to the next fifth grade class after the year. This afternoon we will work with the teachers to develop a laptop learning schedule.

-XO Mike

TiA

Yesterday was sort of a bust. We had plans to go visit our potential school and meet the headmaster and several classrooms. Our contact at STeP UP told us to meet her at 11am. Paul suggested we arrive around 11:30 because she would be late. At 11:30 we arrived and started waiting for our contact, Roberta, to arrive. At 12:30 we left and went to lunch. It’s 8am the following day and still no word from her.

The plus side is that we’re about to go meet the Minister of Education and let him know what we’re up to. Even more exciting than that is we confirmed a rumor that the Prime Minister received a gift of 500 XOs from Portugal and because he doesn’t know how to deploy them, they are sitting in storage. We are going to push to get to help deploy these laptops. In order to get more time with the Prime Minister we are going to have a meeting as well as invite him to our 4th of July party. This party should be HUGE. Several ambassadors from various countries, several ministers, and many friends Illinois has met over the past three years.

Off to our meeting.
-XO Mike