Alan Garcia, the President of Peru, just announced that the country will be handing out their one millionth XO laptop by the end of this year and will soon be building manufacturing facilities to build the laptops locally. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program created the XO laptop as an inexpensive tool for children around the world to learn with. The OLPC program in Peru has a goal to have laptops in 100% of the country’s public primary schools by the end of 2011.
“Being the largest deployment worldwide, Peru is an outstanding example of OLPC. We hope to see other countries establish manufacturing facilities of the scale and magnitude of Peru’s. Local manufacturing of XO laptops will enable Peru both to transform education and to make important investments in its economy,” said Rodrigo Arboleda, CEO of OLPC. It was also announced that additionally, 20,000 schools will get LEGO WeDo kits — easy to use kits that teach kids about robotics — in addition to the 92,000 that are already distributed.
Some of the Peruvian schools receiving laptops this year will be among the first to get their hands on the XO-1.75, a new laptop developed by OLPC that lowers its power consumption with a new energy chip — making it one of the most energy efficient laptop around. These low-energy computers are essential in some parts of Peru, where electricity isn’t available to communities. The XO laptop costs about $35 to produce and currently over 2 million children around the world are learning with the OLPC program.
Via OLPC News
