Computer Room - Nepal, Vietnam, and Cambodia

The computer grants provide each school with four computers, one printer, all related hardware and software, and a dedicated dial-up connection. In turn, these communities must provide matching grants for teacher training and computer upgrades, repairs, and maintenance. Room to Read encourages donations of educational software and CD-ROMs to help children learn languages, advanced mathematics, and physics.

Technology, Education, Children.

Since its establishment in 2000, the nonprofit organisation Room To Read has built 15 schools and 150 libraries and donated 90,000 books to rural classrooms. Room To Read also provides scholarships for girls, who have lower literacy rates throughout the developing world. With only two full-time employees, Room to Read enlists community involvement. Villages are asked to raise a significant portion of the overall expenditure for building a new school. When libraries, computer labs, and language labs are established, schools contribute shelves, desks, and chairs.

Room To Read developed Computer Room in response to the high demand of teachers and students in communities where it has already built schools: Nepal, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The average computer room for a rural school costs about US$4,000. The first set of eleven grants will provide 36 computers in Nepal and 20 computers in Vietnam, giving immediate computer access to approximately 2,500 schoolchildren. The organisation's founder reports that, in the group's initial efforts at wiring classrooms, students and teachers are most impressed by e-mail because it allows them to stay in touch with foreigners they have met over the years and family members who have emigrated.