Ngina Shillingford Brings one Laptop per Child to Dominica

On June 16, 2010, 11th grader, Ngina Shillingford and her classmate, Julia Weber, will be handing over 60 XO-Laptops to children of the Salybia Primary School, in the Kalinago (Carib) Territory, and the Newtown Primary School, in Dominica. Those computers became available because of the tireless work of the two high school students. The students are from Noble and Greenough Academy, a private school in Dedham, Massachusetts and they decided to raise funds and work with OLPC to deploy the computers to Dominica .The Julia, Ngina story is remarkable

In March of 2006 Ngina the daughter of Dominicans Yolanda and Berdock Shillingford (and Julia) visited Kliptown, a township in South Africa, on a (Nobles) school community service trip. Two years later Ngina and her family were invited to meet some of the children of the township who were visiting OLPC in Cambridge. The children (hosted by the Weber family) were in Massachusetts to receive training in how to use the XO-laptops, so that they could in turn teach the other children back in Kliptown. At the meeting Ngina learnt that Julia’s family had donated XO-laptops to the children in Kliptown. There she saw how the laptops could impact the lives of all children, and immediately began thinking of how she could involve children in Dominica in this program. Ngina said, “I thought that OLPC was such an awesome and exciting program helping to educate children around the world, and I decided that I did not want Dominica’s children to miss out on such an opportunity.” A short time later, Ngina started to discuss with her parents and classmates, ways to raise funds to bring these laptops to Dominica.

OLPC is a non-profit organization with the goal of giving every child in the developing world, a rugged, useful laptop with which to enhance, supplement, and in some cases provide an education by offering access to the internet and all its educational resources.

The first ‘fund-raiser’ at the girls’ school, selling artifacts made by the Kalinago people, as well as dolls and jewelry from Dominica, raised only $160.00. Next Ngina, Julia and the Community Service Director at Noble and Greenough organized a coin drive at their school to raise more funds; but only $290.00 was collected. Meanwhile, Ngina (and her parents) had already started to solicit donations from family and friends, as well as hold fund raising activities among Dominicans in the US. By the end of October of 2009 Ngina had mailed or hand-delivered over 175 letters to family members, friends and organizations asking for monetary contributions to purchase the laptops. She and her parents also held a few ‘fund-raisers’ selling Dominica’s traditional clothes (sewn by her mother), photo cards and jewelry to Dominicans in Boston, New York, New Jersey and Toronto. Within a few months Ngina raised $5,510, enough to purchase about 30 X0-laptops. $4,445 came from donations from just 30 individuals/families, the majority being Ngina’s family members or friends of her family. After this overwhelming support, Ngina commented: “I knew we had to work hard to raise a lot of money to make this happen, but I always felt, with my parents and other family members behind me, the goal was always attainable.”

Soon after Julia’s father, Larry Weber, an advisor to OLPC, who throughout had been following the developments of the project very closely informed Ngina’s family he would match 30 laptops. He subsequently contacted OLPC and a couple months later the company shipped 60 XO-laptops to Dominica. The server, antennae, adaptors, access points, and other equipment needed to deploy the computers were purchased (with funds raised for the project) and sent to Dominica. Some funds are also being used to pay for the travel expenses of an OLPC representative, Paul Commons, to Dominica to deploy the laptops and train the children and teachers.

Since 2005 XO-laptops have been purchased from OLPC and distributed to more than 1.5 million children in over 35 countries throughout the world. Dominica is now the only country in Caribbean apart from Haiti to have these laptops. Ngina’s vision is to see every child in Dominica have an XO-laptop, and she and her family are raising more funds to bring laptops to another school on their next trip to Dominica. After these deployments, Ngina hopes the Government will adopt the OLPC program and provide a laptop to every child in Dominica. The children in Dominica will find that these XO-laptops (about $175-$200 each) easy-to-use, yet extremely powerful. From video capabilities, to text books storage, to social networking, the uses of these laptops will be nearly endless. The Dominica children like others around the globe will discover productive possibilities for themselves, their families and their communities through access to knowledge.

President of the Dominica State College who lived in Boston and is a friend of the Shillingford family had high praise for Ngina “This is an extraordinary effort and commitment by a young student to help bring technology and learning to the land of her parents,” At an age when young students are busy doing other things Ngina found the time to dedicate to this worthy project ,she is a shining example of young people globally who are getting prepared to lead I can only hope that our own students here in Dominica will choose to emulate the commitment, drive and enthusiasm demonstrated by Ngina for this project and that the kids who receive the lap tops will one day go out and raise funds to help another child”.