I’m also inspired by the many authors here willing to participate in the program by offering free books. Brilliant work, guys.

I’ve also noticed a few negative remarks here criticizing the project as well as offering the kids Kindles instead of food, clothing etc.

Firstly, I think there are many ways to help people. I do believe there are already programs in Ghana to assist with the more short term needs. I think it’s great that someone is taking a longer term view and offering the children a chance to improve their education. Reading is critical as a basis for education. These children are also being given a chance to get to grips with technology. In this day and age, there are very few jobs left that don’t require some level of technological understanding. Even ‘blue collar’ jobs are now starting to be more automated.

These kids need as much help as they can get. No single organization can provide for all the kids needs. Who are we to criticize the one program that offers education? Let people help in any way they can and be thankful they can.

If you truly believe in them receiving other things besides Kindles… well, there is nothing stopping you from starting up your own program to help them in ways you feel they need.

If you are not part of the solution, then you are just part of the problem.

Best of luck with the kindle program!

The school we have Kindles at in western Kenya has no electricity. We use a generator that can charge 30 Kindles at a time. Because the Kindle battery life is so long, we find we need to charge the devices about once a month.

I know it’s easy to find places where this may not work, or may not scale. The best I can do is point you to the story of Namanyuk – a 10 year old Massai girl who doesn’t own a pair of shoes but, thanks to Worldreader, has access to hundreds of books and a better education. Her story is here – http://www.kilgoris.org/?p=189

Well, if you look at education needs in Netherlands (where I leave at the moment) the biggest issues in education involve qualified and passionate teachers, and useful programmes. If a kindle was a educational tool it would already been used as one.

Regardless of the fact if a school-system thinks that kindle, or iPad or barnes&noble readers are educational tools because of the easy access to the e-books there are a lot of other reasons why electronic appliances do not work. For one can argue that there is no need to print and ship books to Ghana (as if that has been done before), one has to produce kindle and ship those. If they go bust as fast as article mentions then more will be shipped. Other reason would be that “kindles” will not always reach the kids because of political instability in the region, general corruption matters and hight crime rate. Something else I could think of is rising energy costs or demand by either school or children.

I believe, but I might be wrong that sending one teacher for one year is much more valuable to education than sending kindles for the whole school.