Shipment to the Dominican Republic Ready

World Computer Exchange is shipping a container of 220 computers to the República Dominicana in late November. The computers are expected to arrive in the middle of December at the port of Rio Haina. The consignee for this shipment is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Santo Domingo. This is part of a larger project including training and a visit by eCorps

The volunteers of the WCE Chicago Chapter have refurbished the computers and loaded software in Spanish into 200 and in French into 20 sets for the border region with Haiti. This is the fourth container completed by WCE Chicago. Special thanks for the donation of computers from Walgreens, Kankakee Community College and the Chicago History Museum.

WCE has received generous Sponsor funds from an anonymous donor and from The Strategic Group that allow us to substantially reduce our costs for desktop computer sets including monitors, keyboards, and mice. Each set will have an Ubuntu operating system and Open Office suite. We load Ubuntu because it is free, more stable, has easy access to needed drivers, does not have planned obsolescence and does not get viruses.

WCE is working closely on this project with the Infopoverty Institute of the University of Oklahoma and with Education and Training Institute. They are helping us recruit interested groups to become WCE Partners as well as arranging for an appropriate consignee for the container, warehouse space, training space for the iEARN training, and sites for the WCE eCorps team to visit. They will provide training & technical assistance so sites can implement their ICT Village Model for sustainable development & can join their ICT Sustainable Development Center Network They will also provide agricultural and health content for our Partners.

Over half of the sites where we install the computers will to be connected to the internet within two months after installation. WCE has also recruited four of the connected sites to have webcams to connect them with schools with similarly-aged student in the States or Canada.

Volunteer WCE Programme Officers have been providing online leadership & capacity building services to strengthen 5 WCE Partners per year (some recruited by Infopoverty Institute) in: planning, fund raising, PR & building partnerships. Among the WCE Partners receiving these services from WCE are:

• Guanin Cultural Center in Santo Domingo requesting 15 computers for an ESL program in their center in Santo Domingo that is connected to the internet. They expect 45 youth to use these computers and 60 adults per year. They also are requesting 15 for 300 students in their school in la Piedra that is not yet connected to the internet and does not have power. Part of the Sponsored container. They are assisted by a Peace Corps Volunteer.
• San Pedro de Macoris School in El Soco requests 12 computers as part of the shared Sponsored container. 

WCE will provide a volunteer team of six eCorps tech professionals to visit some of the recipient Partners in República Dominicana after they have installed the computers. This team will help with capacity building, upgrading, troubleshooting, networking and training. WCE is now recruiting volunteers for this team:www.worldcomputerexchange.org/eCorps-dominican-republic-april-2011. Our sponsor is paying half of the costs of volunteers who go on this trip.

Included in this project, WCE is working with iEARN-USA and iEARN-Argentina to provide multi-day online and onsite iEARN teacher training for 32 recipient teachers in the use of the internet to improve learning via experiential, inter-active, multi-country projects. 

WCE has arranged to provide multi-day Waveplace teacher training in new team approaches to the learning environment with content on USB sticks for some of the computers that will not initially be able to connect to the internet.

WCE is also working to pilot learning centers for students to take the online business & computer science courses at the tuition-free University of the People . These centers may include student recruitment & support.

WCE is seeking to assist in developing a university exchange of faculty, students, curriculum and materials between a university in the República Dominicana and one in the States or Canada.

We are also providing youth with BluMail e-mail accounts & with links to the rich opportunities for activism, jobs, volunteering, mentoring, information, networking & story sharing of BluWorld.