India

Once upon a time, Sumitra used to roam the streets of the Indian city of Ahmedabad, collecting discarded caps which could be recycled and sold back to manufacturers such as Coca-Cola.
She would spend the whole day sifting through the rubbish collecting the caps in return for a few hundred rupees – about $2. Then in 2006, [...]

Katha is an organization that connects grassroots work in education in India, and it has driven its education model on a single powerful idea: Children can bring change that is sustainable and real, which is in strong alignment with the goal of OLPC.

Katha runs 71 schools in slum communities with more than 200,000 children. XO laptops were deployed at Katha Khazana, one of the school setup by Katha in a slum community at New Delhi.

The school is marked by its distinctive atmosphere creating a rich learning experience for students ranging from pre-nursery grade to 12th grade, which was further enriched when OLPC India distributed XOs to the school children on 21st January.

Nokia Life Tools aims to give users direct access to information that can change how they do business.  Launched in 2008 in India, Nokia Life Tools deliver agricultural information, educational resources and entertainment to users over SMS.  At the end of 2009, Nokia Life Tools expanded to Indonesia.
The service allows subscribers to receive updates on chosen topics – market prices, news tips, weather forecasts, English lessons, exam preparation, or entertainment. The SMS-based service sends basic text messages on an icon-driven interface; the delivery system ensures that the service works wherever mobile phones work. The information that is sent out to the consumer’s mobile phone is targeted to the person based on his or her location.

Friends, this is my second to last Road to Hyderabad post.  That means we are less than 2 weeks away from the opening of the Tech4Society event.To be honest, it still feels very far away.  There are lots of last minute arrangements and decisions to make.  Long ago I naively believed I would feel like we were “almost done” by this point.  Ha! At this point 10 days feels like both an incredibly long time and an incredibly short one.  It will be bizarre to write this post next week when we are truly just days away.