Open Learning ExchangeUniversal Basic Education 2015

Mahabir Pun, Director of Community Relations for OLE Nepal, spoke July 30 at MIT in Cambridge, MA on his tree-climbing job. Dr. Pun is team leader for the Nepal Wireless Project, which is trying to bring wireless Internet access to every village in Nepal.

Pun said the work was a “crazy project”, since when they started in 2000 the team had no money and knew very little about wireless technology. “You see photographs of our antenna dishes up in the tops of trees,” he said. “We did not put them there so we could invent ‘green wireless’. We did that because we had no money to build towers.”

Under Nepal’s previous government, it was illegal for private citizens to import key pieces of technology needed for the project, so team members and ‘tourists’ endured significant risks by smuggling components in their backpacks. The current government has recognized and licensed the project, and is helping integrate it into a large-scale effort to provide improved Internet access to Nepal’s larger communities. “We have worked very hard and many, many villages now have wireless,” Pun said, “but still most of the country is waiting.”

For Nepali villagers, access to the Internet is often less about checking email and more about providing remote medical care and advice for communities that have no doctors, and helping teachers provide a suitable education for the students in their care. In regard to the latter, Pun spoke extensively about the efforts of OLE Nepal to introduce and support e-learning in Nepali village classrooms. “To put a laptop in a classroom, and have no materials to use on it, is to waste everybody’s time,” he said.

The presentation was one of many Pun has been making during a tour of the United States to raise support for the wireless project. He asks as many people as possible to commit to a dollar a month so that the team can continue to extend and improve their wireless network.

To find out more about supporting the Nepal Wireless Project, visit www.nepalwireless.net.

Tom Oates joined OLE as Chief Development Officer on July 1, taking on responsibilities for fund raising for OLE worldwide. Tom’s professional fund raising experience extends back to door-to-door canvassing in the early 1980s and includes managing foundation and corporate relations for Defenders of Wildlife and serving as director of development for Christian Relief Services Charities, a family of affiliated US and international human services charities.

Tom’s professional success has opened doors to broad opportunities. His interest in human/wildlife interactions led to his doing the field audio and distribution work for an EMMY-nominated documentary focusing on the annual spawning of Atlantic horseshoe crabs on the Delaware Bay, “Dollars on the Beach.” Building on that material, he later helped develop an award-winning, multi-media, multi-disciplinary curriculum, “Green Eggs and Sand.”

Tom’s service on the board of a Chinese nature protection organization led to his developing an “up close and personal” profile of the composer Chien Tai Chen, that aired nation-wide on China’s five major television networks, featuring Chen’s theme song for an emerging grassroots Chinese environmental organization. He also has served on the advisory board of an American Indian educational organization.

Living on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, near Washington, DC, Tom enjoys volunteering in the local community, riding his bicycle and eating roast sweet corn and watermelon when they are in season.

Representatives from OLE Ghana and OLE Rwanda attended a recent Global eSchools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI) workshop in Kigali, Rwanda.

GeSCI provides strategic advice to Ministries of Education in developing countries on the effective use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) for education and communities of learning. GeSCI works to improve the quality of teaching and learning through the strategic and effective use of ICTs.

The workshop presented an opportunity for continued collaboration between OLE and GeSCI. Already GeSCI has provided valuable support to both OLE Ghana and OLE Rwanda during the important early stages of their development. Coordination of efforts between OLE and GeSCI is a priority for both organizations.

The GeSCI workshop also presented a welcomed opportunity for networking between OLE Ghana and OLE Rwanda leaders. Topics of discussion were funding, future projects, and partnerships.

OLE welcomes its newest centre, OLE Rwanda. OLE Rwanda’s mission is to use Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as a tool to trigger achieving quality Basic Education (in Rwanda, the first nine years of schooling) for all by 2015. Rwandan Universal Basic Education will benefit from free and open resources and successful educational models.

OLE Rwanda works in partnership with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Youth. The mission of OLE Rwanda is integrated in the Rwandan Education Sector Strategic plan 2006 - 2010 (ESSP) for basic Education. This plan also empowers young people to participate actively in the government’s poverty eradication programme (Vision 2020 Umurenge) through human capacity building projects.

OLE Rwanda has an impressive Board of Trustees led by Chairman Bizimana Muhebera. Chairman Muhebera is the Director of Library at the Kigali Institute of Education. Murinda Muzira Jacques is the new Executive Director for OLE Rwanda.

The first areas of concentration for OLE Rwanda will be the creating and describing digital content for the Rwandan education system so that it can be shared quickly and freely by teachers all over the country, and developing and deploying a peace building curriculum for basic education.