Henry's 3rd Day at FOH

Hey everyone, Henry here.

Today was another good day at Fountain of Hope. We got a flat tire on the way, which was a minor setback, but we arrived in due time. We got a quick start, with the regular kids from the previous two days familiar with the procedure and ready to help out and get started. These kids, I will not hesitate to say, are now proficient with these XO laptops. They know how to get in and out of applications, how to save and name their projects, and how to utilize the machines to the point at which they are most useful for them.

With this realization, we decided to try and introduce the laptops to a new group of kids. Our second group is made up of much younger kids; most of whom cannot speak English at all. I was caught off-guard when these new kids sat down on the laptops and did not know how to maneuver the cursor, having gotten so used to seeing the extent of the previous groups' dexterity.

While starting off was slow, going through the kids one by one (with much needed Bemba translation help from other volunteers), we were eventually able to familiarize them with the layout and controls, as well as the basics of the operating system.

The applications that were immediately popular with this group were the "Tam Tam Mini", "Browse" for listening to music, and the essential "Record" for all the little celebrities (one recorded himself performing a very innovative rap he had thought up.)

Today we were also nicely surprised to see an increase in girls using the laptops, as previously it had been almost entirely boys. In the second group, Loveness Zyambo, a particularly bright young girl, was among the first to understand and master her laptop. She was also very helpful to the other kids, and to us; she would share her projects and discoveries with her neighbors, urging them to share theirs, as well, and being a Bemba speaker, she was able to help her peers in ways that Ellie and I could not.

For the future, Ellie and I plan to make a visual to help communicate rules about the laptops to the kids who have a harder time understanding English (ex. washing hands before using the touch-pad, not deleting software, proper shutdown, etc.) so that these laptops can be more accessible to other kids like those in the second group.

Overall, today was a success: we found ourselves totally irrelevant to the first group of kids, and the second group are already well on their way to mastering these machines.

-Henry