Providing Lesotho's Children with Keys to the World

This is the story of our efforts to end the vicious cycle of poverty, disease, inadequate education, and early death
in a remote rural community in Lesotho, Africa, by providing quality education and life skills
to the young children there. Join us on our journey ...

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Laptops to Lesotho talk at Friends of Lesotho Annual Meeting

I gave a short talk about our Laptops to Lesotho project yesterday at the Friends of Lesotho (FOL) Annual Meeting, via conference call. 

 

Lesotho Ambassador David Mohlomi Rantekoa gave the introductory remarks at the meeting.  I was very pleased when he made an unsolicited reference to our laptops project and said it was a great thing for Lesotho!

 

My talk was well received.  Because it had to be short, I didn't go into a lot of details about the nuts and bolts, but talked more about the need for this kind of work, our philosophy, and how we've tried to encourage and allow the Basotho to lead the project.  I did talk about the training program and writing the contracts.  I praised the teachers and the principals for their enthusiasm and hard work, and I mentioned the great progress they had made.  The talk was followed by some good questions and comments.

 

After the talk, I got the following email from Kevin Freer, a FOL Board Member I have worked extensively with on other FOL business.  I am going to work with him on writing the journal article he suggests in his email.

 

If you would like to hear my talk, there will be a link to a recording of the entire meeting posted on the Friends of Lesotho website at www.friendsoflesotho.org.  There is also a copy of the meeting minutes there.  And I will post the text of my talk on our blog.

 

- Janissa

 

 

 

From: Kevin Freer
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 12:42 PM

I was very impressed with your work, especially what you learned about development work.

This project would make an excellent journal article or a master’s thesis if you don’t already have an MS.

People studying adoption of innovations, including technology, would be very interested in what you have done in Lesotho.

Let me know if you want any help writing up a journal article in your spare time.

Recognition in a publication may help you with a grant application someday.

 

Kevin

Text of Janissa's talk has been posted

Read the text of Janissa's talk at the Annual Meeting of Friends of Lesotho on 12 March 2011:  Text of FOL talk

.