Fact:
According to UNICEF 21% of the world’s population of the world’s population makes less than a dollar a day, that roughly equals 1,320,107,880 people who live in dire poverty world wide; that is over 4 times the entire US population.
One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is a worldwide initiative to create and distribute low cost laptops to impoverished children arcoss the globe. OLPC’S new ad doesn’t pull any punches. Brutal realities that many impoverished children are forced to endure are right there in your face, like it or not. Their new ad is a interesting example of using Barely Legal for the purpose of Giving Back and it makes a good case that sometimes it is OK to step over the line and make people a little uncomfortable.
A child being forced to labor, prostitution, fight in wars, or suffer from hunger and preventable diseases is not an image that many of us are comfortable with, but there it is, as the ad ominously states “ Children are fast learners”. The unfortunate truth is that these scenarios are simply a fact for too many children in poverty stricken areas of the world.
But, the ad is not all gloom and doom as we see smiling faces with a laptop then continues, “let’s give them the right tools.”
The stark contrast of images showing children shooting machine guns juxtaposed against images of children learning and creating with the help of the World Wide Web is convincing; even if it is a little unsettling. The power of a learning tool, like a laptop, is not obvious until you have a perspective into what life is really like for these children.
A laptop not only gives impoverished children a chance to learn and blaze the path to social advancement, it may be their only chance to catch a glimpse of what life without poverty might look like. As UNICEF states:
“Children experience poverty with their hands, minds and hearts”
Opinion:
The video may be hard to swallow but we think it serves as a reminder that to fill a child’s stomach is not enough, if we truly want to end poverty we must feed their hearts and minds as well.
Watch the video and decide for yourself .
http://www.unicef.org/sowc05/english/statistics.html
