Labdoo is a non-profit organization that provides, free of charge, refurbished
laptop
A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...
s loaded with child-friendly educational software in local languages to schools, orphanages, and refugee projects in low-income countries around the world. The organization is dedicated to not incurring additional
economic cost nor contributing to the generation of
emissions.
[Dootrips: A CO2-neutral Global Transportation System based on Collaboration]
” Jordi Ros-Giralt, Adrian Rosello, Jordi Garcia. Published by Elsevier, Procedia Engineering Volume 78, 2014, Pages 124–133. Accessed 24 December 2016.[Project Labdoo.org: Humanitarian Social Networks and Positive Sum Development]
” Jordi Ros-Giralt. International Conference on Sustainable Development Practice—Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, September 2013. Through its global network of grassroots volunteers connected through more than 400 operational hubs, it has provided its services to more than 700,000
student
A student is a person enrolled in a school or other educational institution.
In the United Kingdom and most commonwealth countries, a "student" attends a secondary school or higher (e.g., college or university); those in primary or elementar ...
s
Approach
Labdoo's approach is based on leveraging a global volunteer social network platform, which is divided into "hubs" to carry out the work required to achieve its goal of providing children in low-income countries with computers and the opportunity to improve their digital
literacy skills. The Labdoo platform allows users to engage via four types of
resources.
Dootronics
"Dootronics" are what the donated used laptops or tablets are called. These devices must meet two
requirements in order to be accepted for donation:
1) The device, after all the existing data is securely removed, can be repurposed and uploaded with child-friendly educational software in local languages
2) The device can be transported via "Dootrips".
Dootrips
"Dootrips" (also called "Labdoo Trips") are contributions from individuals and organizations who, when embarking on travel,
donate
A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles. A donation may satisfy medical needs such as blo ...
space in their luggage or shipments to carry the computers and laptops from the hubs to the recipient schools located in their travel destination. They claim that the Dootrips system would make it possible for these devices to be sustainably transported and delivered to the schools without incurring any additional economic cost and also without adding to emissions.
Edoovillages
"Edoovillages" ( or "Educational Villages") are the Dootronics schools and educational spaces registered in the Labdoo platform and approved to receive the donated laptops and tablets.
Hubs
Hubs are composed of volunteers who are active in the various tasks involved in making these devices like brand new and ready for delivery and delivering them to their destinations. This includes computer donating, collecting, sanitizing, donating a Dootrip, carrying devices to an Edoovillage. Given that this effort is taking place globally, the Hub network model is adapted as needed to its particular location, but as part of a global collaborative community, all tasks are required to be managed in a transparent way, sharing the same volunteering principles.
History
In 2004, while enrolled as a
graduate student at the
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Jordi Ros-Giralt joined the UCLA
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Chapter. He had an idea to collect used laptops from fellow students, refurbish them, and then donate them to a needy school in the area. Three other classmates, Christine Lee, Michael Bruce and Charlie Fan,
["A Portable and Sustainable Computer Education Project for Developing Countries-Phase I", Jordi Ros-Giralt, Christine Lee, Michael Bruce, Charlie Fan, Regina Quan, Henry Pai. International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 27-47, Spring 2006.] joined Ros-Giralt in organizing this effort. They spent the rest of the school year gathering computer donations, cleaning them, and then installing educational software. During the summer of 2005, these four traveled to the village of Antigua, Guatemala, where they set up a computer lab with 12 laptops at a local school and connected them to the Internet using a 250 kbit/s
DSL connection.
Following this trip to Guatemala, the four wanted to find a way to make a greater contribution by expanding this effort. They developed an online
collaborative
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
tool that would allow anyone to participate in the cause of bringing educational laptops to schools.
As a result, the non-profit social network Labdoo was born. The model created and strategy proposed allowed Labdoo to unlock a large pool of small
volunteering resources anywhere in the world, making the project scalable and sustainable. In 2010, Labdoo.org was registered as a 501(c)(3)
charity organization in Irvine, California with a board of directors composed of Jordi Ros-Giralt, Wendy Lu, and Calvin Shen.
Funding
According to its charter, the Labdoo Project is operated as a zero funding organization.
A zero-funding organization is simultaneously a non-profit organization and a social business and as such, it is self-sustainable, without any major source of monetary funding, including philanthropic donations, external investment funding, or even internal profits.
Awards and publications
* In 2017, the Labdoo Project is awarded the Alan Turing Award by the Catalan Association of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Engineers.
* In 2017, Labdoo is one of the 3 nominated projects in the area of
sustainable development
Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...
of the
GreenTec Awards in 2017.
* In 2016, the German Chancellor
Angela Merkel awarded the Labdoo project for its social commitment.
* In 2016, Labdoo was one of the 100 winners of the Google Impact Challenge Award in Germany.
* In 2016, Labdoo was one of the three nominated projects in the area of recycling and resources of the
GreenTec Awards in 2016.
[{{Cite web, url=http://www.greentec-awards.com/downloads/161207_GTA_Gewinner_Nominierte.pdf, title=Winners and Nominations 2006-2016 {{! GreenTec Awards, access-date=2017-02-13, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170123125921/http://www.greentec-awards.com/downloads/161207_GTA_Gewinner_Nominierte.pdf, archive-date=23 January 2017, url-status=dead]
* In July 2014, an article about the Labdoo Project was published during the Humanitarian Technology Conference in Boston, United States.
* In September 2013, an article about the Labdoo Project was published during the
Earth Institute International Conference on Sustainable Development Practice, in New York.
* In 2012, a chapter of the book
IEEE Service-Learning in the Computer and Information Sciences was dedicated to the Labdoo Project.
References
Educational projects
International charities