Kids on Computers

“How do you feel?” This was one of the most common questions a lot of my friends and family asked me upon my return from Huajuapan after setting up our computer lab. I told them I felt happy, satisfied, tired, excited and relieved. But above all, I was overcome with a really strong sense of gratitude. A lot of hard work went into making the lab setup successful and I would like to take some time to thank everybody that contributed.

First of all, I would like to thank the people of Huajuapan. This may sound like a cliche, but we wouldn’t have been able to do this without them. When the parents of the school heard we were bringing computers, they built a lab, brick by brick, by hand. Every single day, they brought us home cooked meals. In more ways than one, they helped lay the foundation for our lab.

Huajuapan lab

Next, I would like to thank everybody at the school. While we tried to minimize the disruption, I am afraid we failed. They didn’t complain, instead they always greeted us with smiles. To top it off, they threw us a party that I will never forget.

Then, I would like to thank all of our donors. People donated money, computers, keyboards, mice, printers and much much more.

I would also like to thank FedEx. They helped us ship all of our equipment completely free of cost a pretty long way.

Edubuntu, Gnome, GCompris, vlc, Firefox, remastersys – these are just a handful of the open source packages we used for the lab. We are deeply grateful to the free/open source software community for producing such wonderful products that will help train the next generation.

Personally, I would also like to thank my employer Mozilla for providing me the time away from work to set up the lab. Seeing as I had only joined at the beginning of the month, their understanding underlined one of the main reasons why I am so proud to work here – a keen sense of community and service to the community.

Last, but not the least, I want to thank the team that worked so hard to make this happen. In no particular order:

Manuel Crisógono Narváez Acevedo (He is the principal of the school and an administrator par excellence. Without him, I don’t think any of this would have happened)
Hermes Ojeda Ruiz
Blanca Santos Cruz
Serena Robb
Thomas Peters
Stormy Peters
Alex Mayorga Adame
Dan Anderson
Don Wierbilis
Ramona Gonzalez Garcia

Huajuapan team (Dan, Thomas, Stormy, Alex, Ragavan, Hermes, Manuel)

One would be hard pressed to find a team so dedicated, passionate and committed to a project. You guys (and girls) rock!

Thank you.