PledgeBank United States
I’ll do it, but only if you’ll help

Pledge “xobook”

"I will write a book about the One Laptop Per Child project and its XO laptop but only if 5,000 other people will pledge to read it."

— Edward Mokurai Cherlin, Serial NGO founder (contact)

Deadline to sign up by: 29^th April 2007
24 people signed up, 4976 more were needed

More details
I am a volunteer http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mokurai with One Laptop Per Child, and a columnist at OLPC News http://www.olpcnews.com/, and I am starting a new NGO to piggyback on the XO laptop program and teach children around the world how to go into business together. I would like to write a book about the XO laptop and how anybody in the world will be able to take an active role in ending poverty by direct action, not merely by sending money.

I need your pledges and your suggestions for content in order to convince a publisher to take on a previously unexplored subject. Sort of the same way Frank Baum had trouble with publishers over the Wizard of Oz, because there had never before been a published American fairy-tale.

Are you concerned that something could go wrong with the project, such as government corruption, or selling XOs on eBay? Please ask. I'm collecting all such problems, so that we can think about how to deal with them.

Would you like to get your children into contact with the children in the program? We plan to link schools all over the world, and there are some with conventional computers ready today in Asia and Africa.

Do you work with a non-profit/NGO that has a successful education, health, human rights, or development program that should be spread to the whole world? Let me know, and I will add it to the book or to the Earth Treasury Web site. Or you can go add it to the OLPC Wiki http://wiki.laptop.org/ today.

Do you like Free Software, and want to know about the first computer ever to run only Free Software? LinuxBIOS, all Free device drivers, all Free applications, and even Free textbooks. Would you like to learn how to program for it?

What else would you like to know about the project?

PS 29 April is my birthday. If you decide to give me a present, I will pay it forward to several hundred million hungry children.

PPS If you want to get involved with the children right now, or help to get computers into villages while we wait for XO production, or have any other good ideas, you can email me at mailto:echerlin@gmail.com.

PPPS XO stands for

O
X

a picture of a happy child with upraised arms.

Comments on this pledge

• loved your comments on olpcnews laptop v. education debate.. saludos!!
  duke crawford, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I'm writing an extensive essey on the OLPC program and their comp. and I would love to include your book in my research. I would be sooo happy if this book was released before Christmas this year when the essey is due... but I guess I might be too optimistic (^_^)
  Great initiative anyway!
  Sofia Norberg, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• With 4978 signatories more needed seems impossible to meet the 29th April deadline but here's my pledge for all its worth!
  Eli S. Mostrales, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Are you still taking pledges? Do you need any help with editing?
  
  I would be glad to read and comment on anything that you have written.
  Dr. A. Robin Aylor, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!