Turks and Caicos

Now in Providenciales (aka Provo), Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). We're here overnighting to catch the next flight to Cap Haitien (aka Cap). I'm having trouble with the internet, so these might go up in a batch when I get home. Provo is strange; there is (flagging) commercial development along the main street through the island. It's not clear if there is a downtown. There's clearly a disparity of wealth, and it seems to run along the color bar.

The mission (which we chose to accept) is to figure a way to bring STEM education to a town in rural Haiti. The town is called Tovar, and it houses an orphanage (flashes of Annie "It's a Hard Knock Life") that serves as a home and school for about 70 kids. There are several players: Mothering Across Continents, Waveplace, and OLPC. The training will be on OLPCs using Squeakland eToys. Smalltalk! There must be power, and from an earlier phone call it seems it must be generated. That's about all we know.

A laptop is a great foundation to lay for a STEM education, but there's more to our project, much more. Few children finish high school in Haiti, and we hope to encourage children and girls especially to pursue as much education as feasible. Delivering STEM education is only a start, though. There has to be something these young people can do with there education.

The possibilities for productive lives boil down to three:

1. Exporting talent: as with many other poor countries, the ostensibly best and brightest make their way to the US and send money back. This is not optimal; it's marginally sustainable, but limited in scope, and only helps the country economically (assuming the person sends money back to take care of family). I've started reading Paul Farmer's book Haiti After the Earthquake, and it's not a cheery read, but one thing is clear: Haiti needs their best and brightest.

2. Move to a city, where there are presumably jobs. Again, suboptimal, and again to refer to Farmer, the cities are not like US cities. There isn't much economic life, and health is very poor. Still, if we can help produce a native intelligent and educated workforce, that would be a benefit in many dimensions.

3. Stay local and create an economy. Microfinancing, producing local goods for sale in cities and abroad, even offering local services that can keep a self-sustaining economy running; all of these are at the pinnacle of what we hope to accomplish.

We need to be very careful observers over the next few days. We had an excellent dinner with a lovely sunset as a backdrop to a great discussion that centered on one idea: what is the connection between education, technology, and opportunity.