86 XO Laptops at Nohana Primary

Just a quick update to let you know exactly how many XO laptops are actually at Nohana Primary School right now. In December 2010, our first deployment, 40 laptops were taken over. You may remember a blog post back in May explaining an additional 20 laptops were delivered to the school. Since then, even more XO laptops have found their way to the school, bringing the grand total to 86 XO laptops. That's a lot more laptops over the course of the year!

Grant Writing Workshop

Since the blog is considerably behind on everything that's been going on, I will be posting a couple times a week about major events of the last several months to cover what's been going on since you last heard from us. Once we get caught up, you should be able to count on regular posts twice a month.

One of the exciting events of 2011 was a grant writing workshop that teachers from Nohana Primary were able to attend in October. The teachers at Nohana Primary had voted the grant writing workshop as their top priority and Maseru Rotary Club provided the funds for them to be able to go. Four teachers from Nohana Primary and Fortunate Gunzo attended the workshop. The great news is they are already putting their new grant writing knowledge to use! When Janissa was in Lesotho she worked with Matlabe on writing a grant for additional XO laptops. They ran out of time to complete it while she was in Lesotho, so Janissa finished the grant back in the US, but she submitted the incomplete version along with the finished grant application. The foundation was impressed with the work Matlabe and the other teachers had done. Below is an email conversation between Matlabe and the foundation, initiated by Matlabe.

Hi

Thank you very much for best wishes you have sent to us.My coleagues are all wishing you all the best. We really had merry Christmas and happy new year.We hope you had the same.I hope you have aiso received our propposal for 50 XO laptops to Kokobe primary school which we made together with Janissa during her visit in November.We wish you all the best.Thank you

Dear Ntate Matlabe

We did indeed receive your proposal and were very impressed with how well you have applied what you learned in that fund-raising course last week. Well done.

I have been in communication with Janissa this week and am very happy to advise you that we have approved a new Grant to Laptops To Lesotho which will enable her to buy 46 more XO laptops for the project in 2012. I note that you have done extensive groundwork with Kokobe Primary School and look forward to seeing the project in action during 2012.

Good luck for the year ahead!

If you were paying attention, you noticed they mentioned Kokobe Primary School would be receiving 46 XO laptops, not Nohana Primary School. More about this exciting development in an upcoming update, so stay tuned!

New L2L Blogger - Sarah Gardner

I'm happy to announce that Sarah Gardner, L2L Director and Secretary, will be taking over responsibilities for keeping this blog up-to-date.  I'm sorry I haven't done a better job, especially since there is so much wonderful news about the project to share.

Thanks Sarah!  I really appreciate your help.

- Janissa