All, Yesterday I attended the opening ceremony of Ambedkar Community Computer Center. The center is a volunteer effort from AID and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi providing free computer training to any young child in the area. There are many reasons why this event is path breaking, but their efforts in using GNU and Linux to teach the youth just goes to show that Free Software has now reached a maturity and ease of use that everyone claimed was a barrier to entry. A few years ago, everyone said Free Software was only a niche and could not cater to the general public.
Well, what our friends have shown is this is quite not the case anymore. Children as young as 7 years work with computers and Free Software and understand how. I saw with some amazement that a young child of 10 (sorry don't have his name) start his computer and give a demonstration of his work without a single hitch. It was quite humbling to learn the difference in hardware and software as body and soul which he described with the help of a stand-in volunteer. There was a time when the screen paused for a second, and this kid did not blink; using the function key to reload the screen! For that this whole community needs to be congratulated. I guess any other child his age would have run to his tutor for support. Although there were many heroes for the day from among the AID volunteers and Sthree Jagruthi Samithi, this young man was the hero of the day.
And the beauty of the approach in this center is that children are being taught to dig down and learn computing from the basics and by experimentation. By adopting Free Software, this center is teaching some higher goals of freedom and community participation (in learning and teaching) that Stallman would be proud of. They are being taught that software is not necessarily a black box that only a few can master or that the restrictions places on by big capital to prevent unrestricted access to computers and computing devices are not the only way forward. One day in the near future, these children will go into their own and profess the freedoms to build and use software as they choose and not as others have chosen for them. That indeed would be a solemn and worthy goal to pursue. I'd urge everyone in this list to take a trip to this center and give a little encouragement to these young people. Then come back and share your stories with everyone.
There was singing and dancing with smiles all around. See the pictureshttp://picasaweb.google.com/kumar.harish.singhand video http://www.youtube.com/v/Q3eVm10rf_c to decide for yourself.
Cheers, Harish Singh