Latest News of MTSA

Dear Friend

Next week, I depart for Afghanistan, to work again toward the goal of bringing education to children who are denied it, predominantly girls.

As the Project Manager of the San Francisco-based project to bring these children the small, rugged, low-power laptop computer, developed at the MIT Media Lab for One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), I will meet with technical and government officials in Kabul committed to this objective.

See the website of MTSA at www.Afghan-Satellite-Teachers.net where you may also donate to support this trip and the continuing effort.

The first part of the trip I will spend in Ghazni, Afghanistan, as a member of a Friendship Delegation of the Hayward-Ghazni Sister City Committee, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. I will also visit a private Learning Center for Girls in Ghazni, which has been supported by Afghan Friends Network (referred to as AFN), a community-based organization in the San Francisco Bay Area co-founded by me almost ten years ago.

You may follow me on Twitter at carolruthsilver. Thank you for your good wishes and financial help, past, present, and particularly future, for a better future for the children of Afghanistan and of the world.

Best regards,

Carol Ruth Silver
Founder and Chairperson of the Board of Directors

Clicking the Donate button below will take you to the Master Teachers by Satellite for Afghanistan Donate page where you can donate by check or using PayPal.

Click here: Support MTSA

(Below, MTSA letter to friends of Afghan children, please help: Download the PDF version)

Dear Friend of MTSA and the little girls of Afghanistan:

If ever there was doubt that their children's education is a high priority of the illiterate parents in rural and war-impacted areas of Afghanistan, the brilliant new adventure / documentary / polemic by Greg Mortenson (author of Three Cups of Tea), sets it straight. Given the chance for education for their children, they will move mountains – they will make Stones into Schools, as this new book describes, for little girls as well as for little boys.

MTSA is an independent volunteer organization dedicated to a vision: that we can provide literacy and elementary education through distance learning technology to all of the forgotten children of Afghanistan -- those who have no schools, no teachers.

There are more than an estimated four million un-schooled children in Afghanistan today. Under the most optimistic results of the education strategic plan published by the Government, they will never get schools or teachers before they grow into illiterate adults. Most are girls in rural areas, but include also impoverished street children in the cities, disabled children and orphaned children. (Today, only 14% of female Afghans can write their name, or read a street sign.)

With your help, MTSA is working to deploy for these un-schooled children the low power, small, rugged laptop computer developed at the MIT Media Labs for One Laptop Per Child, known as the XO. Our colleagues in Afghanistan, OLPC-Afghanistan, have already placed thousands of these computers in local urban schools for the Ministry of Education, and they expect to expand those placements. But at best, only half of the children of Afghanistan will be in a government school.

We are a US 501(c)(3) charity and all donations to MTSA are tax deductible. We are asking for your financial help now because we have been given the opportunity to purchase at cost the XO in units of 25 laptops, each unit approximately the right number for a home school or Community Based School.

Unlike the rote education provided in existing schools, the XO captures a child's natural curiosity-based learning experience, to create mastery of numbers and letters, elementary science, art, creativity and critical thinking – a process known as “constructionist” learning. These will be the little girls who strive to become nurses and teachers and President, instead of mothers at 14. These will be the little boys who will ask the hard questions, envision themselves as mechanics and engineers and entrepeneurs, and not be sucked in by fanatics.

For the sake of the children of Afghanistan, and for the sake of all of the children of the world, please join us in giving generously to this effort.

Sincerely, Carol Ruth Silver, Project Director, MTSA



Yes, I want to contribute to the exciting project of making literacy and constructivist learning available to the still un-schooled children of Afghanistan.

[ ] My gift of $60 will pay for training a teacher in the XO technology.

[ ] My gift of $100 will pay for converting five of the XO computers to a keyboard for Dari (Farsi) and Pashto, and to load special software and books on the XO.

[ ] My gift of $220 will fund part of the solar installation for the whole class, which is expected to continue to produce electricity for approximately ten years.

[ ] My gift of $5,000 is to make it possible for a class of about 25 children to receive the XO laptop who have never before had the opportunity to achieve literacy or other education, and who because of my contribution will be on the path.

Every contribution assists in fulfilling our mission, in actualizing our vision – that with educational tools presently and readily available, no child in Afghanistan needs to be denied an education.

[ ] My check is enclosed. [ ] I will use PayPal on the MTSA web site, www.afghan-satellite-teachers.net.

Date: ____________________________________

First Name: _____________________________ Last Name: _______________________________________

Postal Address: ________________________________________________________________ZIP______________

Day Phone: ______________________ Night Phone: _____________________ Mobile: _________________

Email Address: __________________________________________________________________________________

Comments / Feedback / Further involvement:

MTSA will participate on November 1st in the 2009 Rebuild Afghanistan Summit, an annual gathering of organizations and individuals in Northern California who are committed to helping the people of Afghanistan. The event will be in San Rafael at Dominical University, 50 Acacia Ave, beginning at 11:00 AM. For details and map: www.afghansummit.org

The Pilot Project to demonstrate the MTSA vision--placing 50 OLPC XO laptops in three home school mixed age classes in a rural but safe area of Afghanistan-- was supposed to happen in July. It did not, but we are hoping that it could still happen by year end.

Because this Pilot is outside of, and in addition to, the regular public or private school deployments of the XO laptop being funded for Afghanistan by USAID, we have struggled to put together the funding to make it happen.

The commitment of the donation of 50 of the XO laptop computers by OLPC-Afghanistan is crucial. In addition, we have been grateful for the commitment of the NGO Trust in Education for the solar panels and to pay the teacher at each of the home schools.

We are waiting for the laptops to conduct the Pilot. Meantime, we continue to focus on the main purpose of MTSA: not to allow to be forgotten the approximately half of Afghanistan’s children presently condemned to grow to adulthood as illiterates. MTSA continues to collect commitments and other voices to push for education for these children.

Responding to a suggestion from Sameer Verma that MTSA should apply to OLPC Cambridge for a loan of up to 10 XO laptops for development purposes, MTSA submitted a proposal and was awarded 9. We have already received them (plus an extra one sent for parts, just in case).

Although the XO-1.5 is expected to be released shortly, the ones we received are the XO-1, and not localized for Afghanistan. But with the help of Jim Stockford, our tech support of Systemateka, they have been made perfect for demonstrating to potential supporters what MTSA and OLPC are all about. This included adding the video created by OLPC-Afghanistan after the Jalalabad deployment. Thank you, Jim; thank you Mike; thank you OLPC.

Carol Ruth Silver, just returned from Afghanistan on the 2nd of August 2009, reports "The trip was very successful, and I am totally re-energized about our MTSA program. The Ministry of Education of Afghanistan has now apparently accepted it as a part of their OLPC planning. This is a huge step!

Hon. Carol Ruth Silver, Project Director of MTSA, is preparing her visit to Afghanistan in July. She will make final arrangements for deployment of 50 XO laptop computers to children in home schools, as detailed in the MTSA Pilot Proposal in conjunction with the OLPC-Afghanistan and the Trust in Education (TIE) organizations.

Eng. Latif Amadi, head of Afghan Film and a MTSA board member, meets with a group of Afghan computer technicians in Kabul to further the development of an educational video and educational software game based on the lore of Nasrudin. The video and software game will teach basic literacy in Dari or Pashto.

Budd MacKenzie, Founder of Trust in Education (TIE), which is supporting home based schools in (relatively) safe rural areas near Kabul, agrees to participate in the Pilot Proposal.

Svetlana Senajova, Technical Director of OLPC-Afghanistan commits to the Pilot Project providing 50 of the OLPC XO laptops, subject to availability, for deployment in Afghan home schools.

Draft proposal for a pilot program to deliver 50 of OLPC's XO laptop computers to home schooling groups that are out of reach of the Afghanistan educational system.

MTSA has garnered important endorsements from Afghanistan educational groups as well as Afghanistan and American politicians.

MTSA adopted as its technology platform the OLPC's XO laptop computer.

Presentation to the US Congress Human Rights Caucus by MTSA, including Power Point slides and video excerpts. See the news clip in Pashto. Read More

See the slides prepared for the U. S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus presentation MTSA slide presentation to Congress.

Invitation received from Congressman Tom Lantos to Hon. Carol Ruth Silver and MTSA to present their program in a briefing before the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus (comprised of 10 Senators and 120 Members of the House of Representatives), on the 17th of April, in Washington, DC.
Read More