TiE Charity Gala Evening in Aid of OLPC India December 4, 2009

TiE Sydney cordially invites you to Charity Gala Evening of Indian Dances!
In aid of OLPC, One Laptop Per Child, India

Tickets: Only $30/person, includes Indian Veg Buffet Dinner, Tea/Coffee and Networking at UWS, Parramatta:

6.30pm: Welcome and registrations
7.00pm: Songs by Sumi Krishnan and group
7.15pm Classical Indian dance (BharataNatyam by Hamsa Venkat & Group)
7.45pm OLPC Presentations: Satish Jha & OLPC Australia
8.00pm Auctions
8.15pm Dinner
8.45pm Bollywood Dance by Nupur Dance Company
9.00pm Bangra Dance Group
9.15pm Vote of Thanks/Prizes
9.30pm Finish

Register online here: http://sydney.tie.org/TGS/EM/viewevent/viewEventPT?id_event=3792&from_where=chapter_homepage

or e-mail murali.dharan@sydney.tie.org
or call Murali on 0414 892 361

There will be an auction which includes airfare to India, Hotel nights, massage, coaching sessions, dinners and much more!!!

If anyone is interested in donating prices for the silent auction, please contact Murali 0414 892 361 or Janine Cahill 0403 168 230

TiE SYDNEY
In terms of its origin, TiE stands for "The Indus Entrepreneurs's, reflecting the ethnic background of the individuals who chartered the organization in 1992. But over time, TiE has come to stand for "Talent, Ideas and Enterprise". Its principle objective is to provide a platform on which people with entrepreneurial spirit and all others interested in economic value creation can come together to share their ideas.

TiE has now grown to become a global not-for-profit organization, which is inclusive and transparent in its governance and operations.

Having established chapters in US, Canada, India, UK, Pakistan, Singapore, Dubai, Australia and Malaysia, TiE movement has created a strong foothold in many parts of the world. In all these countries, TiE has brought together the entrepreneurs, business people, government policy makers, professional service providers, academics, and the media with the objective of enhancing the entrepreneurial climate of the respective areas.
http://sydney.tie.org

OLPC
The One Laptop per Child association develops a low-cost laptop—the "XO Laptop"—to revolutionize how we educate the world's children. Their mission is "to provide educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning."
OLPC is designed around five core principles—Child Ownership, Low Ages, Saturation, Connection, and Free and Open Source tools
http://laptop.org

OLPC INDIA
Participation of OLPC project in India will not only revolutionize the way we teach children, the vision behind this "educational" project, but will also scale up the eco-system of sharing between the diverse set of communities existing in the Indian Subcontinent.

In 2008 OLPC Project has made a start in India with a pilot deployment in a rural village at Khairat near Navi Mumbai where laptops have been deployed and every child carries one laptop home. The journey was tremendous in terms of learning and working on Khairat and the project has expanded to several other schools as well. Parikrma in Bangalore, Katha in New Delhi and some smaller ones in UP and other parts of Maharashtra have shown very promising results.

Katha is an organization that connects grassroots work in education in India and since 1990, 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 this year. The students were quite surprised to see that these green boxes were really laptops! Some of them were considering it to be sort of game/toy or even a lunch box!

They were very excited to use the laptop for the first time in their lives and were given instructions to operate the XO and open the Record Activity, they were fascinated to take their photographs. Initially a short demonstration was given to a group of teachers who were also quite excited about the XO and planned ways in which they could utilize it in their curriculum.

Various other features such as Chat, Record, Measure, Maze, Speak, TamTam, Etoys and other activities were also demonstrated.
Students, pumped with new ideas, were so fascinated with the experience that when the teachers began collecting back the laptops, they kept on pinging about when will they get them again. As there are only 30 XOs compared to large number of students, they have scheduled a turn-wise time for each group.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_India

Official Website: http://sydney.tie.org