While One Laptop per Child is a novel idea it isn’t realistic from a natural resources perspective. Money and resources could be put to better use. What would be much more respectful of a sustainable world and the understanding of practical realities of a developing world’s needs would be One Pencil Light per Child. There is no excuse for intelligent ideas suffering because of the lack of light or power. We live in the age of the internet, where anyone with an idea or question can and should be free to research it on the Internet — no longer do we need encyclopedias or other limited books. Let’s enable these ideas, notes, drawings, and inspirations to be captured in the dark and reach their potential during the day.
Regardless of your demographic background, whether you’re the richest or the poorest person on the planet, the simple act of writing in the dark is not available to you. Sure you could roll over in bed and turn the light on to write down that important idea — bummer, you are now wide awake and just fried your eyes. Sure you could type it into your phone, but can you quickly add a drawing, type a character that isn’t on the keyboard, provide depth through shading, or take it with you to the beach? (Okay, I’m sure there’s an iPad app for most of that, but sometimes writing just can’t be beat). What happens when you don’t have power or an iPad? = Pencil Light
Tom’s Shoes Model
Pencil Light’s mission in holding true to the One Pencil Light per Child model is based on providing two pencil lights to deserving children around the world. Using a similar approach to that of TOM’s Shoes we hope to solve a world problem in an effective manner.