Volunteers needed for lab setup in Assam, India

Volunteers needed for lab setup in Assam, India

Kids on Computers is currently working on details for establishing two computer labs in Assam, India. We received a $5000 Yahoo Employee Foundation grant to fund these labs. We are traveling to Assam in late October 2013.

One of the schools where we will be setting up a lab has 300 kids up to the 9th grade level. Currently it only has 2 computers for teaching computer skills to about 240 students in 3rd grade and above. The plan is to set up the lab with about 15 computers in the room shown here. Kids on Computers has been working with the school’s secretary, Nilutpal Kakati, two teachers and the principal on the logistics and timing of KOC volunteer trip. Three teachers at the school have computer skills and will act as lab teachers.

Room waiting for KOC computers at school in Assam, India

Each computer will be installed with a Linux distribution along with Open Office, Educational Games, Offline Wikipedia, and Offline Khan Academy videos installed.  The job of the volunteers is to start-up the machines, establish the internet connection, install and test the software and help train the local staff and students.

The KOC team is planning a 10 day trip, spending partial days in New Delhi and Guwahati to arrive in Morigaon on day 4. The team will meet with the school contacts on day 5 and implement the lab on day 6. Travel back to Guwahati will be on day 9.

Because all of Kids on Computers donations go directly to the equipment and lab creation, volunteers pay for all their own travel expenses, such as airfare, lodging and food. We are a registered 501(c)(3) and all expenses may be tax deductible.

The District Commissioner and town are supporting the project and will be finding places to stay for the volunteers at around $2 a day, making the daily cost for each volunteer around $10 with food. Cost for a tourist visa is $75 and airfare from the U.S. east coast is around $1,700. Vaccinations are recommended.

Visa Information: https://indiavisa.travisaoutsourcing.com/homepage

Visa Cost: https://indiavisa.travisaoutsourcing.com/consular-fees?id=1

Please join us! If you have questions, please email us at volunteer@kidsoncomputers.org. To sign up, please leave you name and email address here https://koc.etherpad.mozilla.org/26 

One comment

  1. Iliyas Shirol

    Greetings !

    Myself Iliyas Shirol a GNU/Linux & Free OpenSource Software enthusiast and promoter from almost a decade. I’m a student of Gogte Institute of technology, 2009 – Computer Science branch. I’ve been an active member in a lot of OpenSource conferences across India.

    On the professional front have spent ample time in building and managing large-scale systems. Designed and developed network management applications. Currently working with InMobi which is one of the hottest startup in India into the Database engineering and Cloud team wherein we’re responsible to manage almost 3 billion transactions/day.

    As a part of a hobby — visit various schools/colleges/universities & conduct technical workshops on programming, GNU/Linux administration, BigData(Hadoop), Databases, Cloud etc

    I would be interested in contributing towards the same. Please do let me know the complete details.

    Thanks.

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