i have a potentially successful non profit idea if anyone out there wants to move to brazil for a few years and set it up:
fact 1: brazil is dirt poor with millions of people living in 'favelas' without a cent to their name
fact 2: the country is embracing open source in gov't and industry
fact 3: there are already some nonprofit educational groups that teach kids from the poor areas in the cities to read/write etc.
fact 4: there are thousands of old PC's that nobody wants floating around usa/canada/europe (and that are basically useless to people living in a high-bandwidth media heavy 1st world country)
CONCEPT: create an organization that recruits tech-savy coders/database people open source gurus from the community in brazil's cities to teach the super-poor kids about computers/linux/coding/databases etc.. empower these kids who have nothing to become the future techno-leaders of the country by supplying them with free PCs on modems...
some relevant links:
Citizen Schools is already doing something like this (not focusing on computers though) in the USA:
http://citizenschools.org/AboutCS/index.cfm
Brazilian organization helping people in the slums:
http://www.parati.inf.br/uk/obras.htm
Company that pairs computer donations to nonprofits:
www.cristina.org
let me know if you're interested. I'm busy working right now, but i'd love to help people out to get this done!
--Abe
abecaplan at yahoo dot com
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i have a potentially successful non profit idea if anyone out there wants to move to brazil for a few years and set it up: fact 1: brazil is dirt poor with millions of people living in 'favelas' without a cent to their name fact 2: the country is embracing open source in gov't and industry fact 3: there are already some nonprofit educational groups that teach kids from the poor areas in the cities to read/write etc. fact 4: there are thousands of old PC's that nobody wants floating around usa/canada/europe (and that are basically useless to people living in a high-bandwidth media heavy 1st world country) CONCEPT: create an organization that recruits tech-savy coders/database people open source gurus from the community in brazil's cities to teach the super-poor kids about computers/linux/coding/databases etc.. empower these kids who have nothing to become the future techno-leaders of the country by supplying them with free PCs on modems... some relevant links: Citizen Schools is already doing something like this (not focusing on computers though) in the USA: http://citizenschools.org/AboutCS/index.cfm Brazilian organization helping people in the slums: http://www.parati.inf.br/uk/obras.htm Company that pairs computer donations to nonprofits: www.cristina.org let me know if you're interested. I'm busy working right now, but i'd love to help people out to get this done! --Abe abecaplan at yahoo dot com