Robbie MacKay

For anyone who hasn’t played with an XO, the laptops made by the One Laptop Per Child project, you really should. They’re quite brilliant: simple, easy to use, and very unlike any laptop I’ve used before.

There are testing groups in both Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, that spend their weekends messing with XO’s, installing software, testing it, tracking bugs and reporting the results. There’s a simple joy to it. Learning how to work these laptops. Trying out all the software. Showing young kids how to use them. Discovering the kids can use them better than you can (!).

Find your local group. Join in.

OLPC testing. The joy of

I think about the work non profits do a lot, for some obvious reasons: I used to work for one, Greenpeace NZ, and I helped start another one, Engineers Without Borders NZ. Even for causes and purposes that aren’t particularly interesting to me, non profits are still close to my heart.

I appreciate the special something it takes for someone to decide they want to dedicate a massive amount of effort to something for a reason greater than just money.

But that’s not really what I want to write about.

What I’ve noticed recently is that the link between environmental issues and development issues is often over looked.

To be more specific – since no one knows what the hell ‘environmental issues’ or ‘development issues’ actually are! – I’m talking about the link between environment damage, destruction of habitats, pollution, climate change, etc.. and poverty, disease, hiv, political persecution, repression, etc.

So how are these linked?
It’s seems likely that all these issues are the result of the same mindset. But I’d suggest its actually a more direct link then that.
First just take a look at where a large amount of environmental damage is done, by whom its done, and who bears the brunt of the cost.
It often occurs in developing countries, funded by governments or large corporations in developed countries. And poor and underpriveleged communities often bear the worst cost: destruction of their home and the environments they need to survive.

People in poverty have little power (in our current world model anyway), and have little ability to protect their environment. They’re also sometimes desperate enough that they will take a short term deal to make it through… even if it makes things worse for them later.

If these people had more power – it would be much harder for us to live the way we do, exploiting them and their resources. We do terrible damage to our own countries environments. but not on the scale (and without being noticed) that it is in developing countries.

I used to think these problems were separate. And weigh up supporting environmental charities against development charities. Usually deciding to support those fighting climate change. Reasoning that there wasn’t much point helping developing countries, if our eco system just stopped functioning.
But really, you can’t have one without the other.
We need to have both.

They start charities and non profits
They start social movements

These all require similar skills, spirit and courage… but have slightly different goals.

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome.

- from Entrepreneur on Wikipedia