Background
In order to explore One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and its mission to improve education in
developing countries, it is necessary to first understand the nature of living in these
countries. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes health, food, and
education as basic human rights, but people living in developing countries are deprived of
these seemingly simple and obvious necessities.
Founder of OLPC and MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte firmly believes that education is the
solution and that children are the world's most precious natural resource. Combining
these thoughts, he founded OLPC in 2005 as a response to the educational needs of children
in developing countries. At the 2005 World Economic Forum, he presented that a $100
laptop in the hands of every child would empower them to learn from and to teach each
other. As CTO of OLPC Mary Lou Jepsen said, the "laptop is a vehicle to transform
education around the world." In order to bring this idea to reality, OLPC set out to
design a laptop that would fit in the context of the developing world.