Telecom Billionaire Establishes Low-Cost Laptop Program for Mexican Children

That's the headline on a news story from a posting on today's Philanthropy News Digest. Here's a couple of quotes along with a link to its source, which adds some additional perspectives:

"Saying that digital education holds the key to a better future for Mexico's poor, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has pledged to donate 250,000 low-cost laptops to the country's children by the end of the year and as many as a million in 2008, the Associated Press reports".

"With an estimated cost of $250 to $300 per machine, Slim would have to put up as much as $300 million for a million laptops, though he expects the costs to continue to fall. His plan initially would put the laptops in schools and libraries, where they would be lent out like books, he said, before eventually being given outright to students. In addition, his companies would help set up wireless networks for students to connect to the Internet".

"Slim, whose fortune may already have surpassed that of Bill Gates, said his goal is to build about a hundred "early stimulation" preschools within four years to give poor Mexican children training in math, language, and computers to improve their opportunities later in life. "The best investment one can make," he said, "is to reduce poverty."

I love it.

- Don