Helping Slave Lake rebuild with FOSS and sustainable IT

Ralph Pichie thevillagegeek at gmail.com
Tue May 17 16:59:33 UTC 2011


Thousands of people have lost everything in the fire that destroyed
much of Slave Lake and forced the population to evacuate. The new
library is gone. That means hundreds of school-age children will have
no access to computers when they return to the area and families will
be without computers and Internet communications.

GNU/Linux and free software is known for its adaptability to the needs
of developing and recovering communities, which Slave Lake now is.
While we focus on the tragedy, we should not lose sight of the
opportunity to introduce thousands of people to the many benefits of
secure, sustainable, open and adaptable software. Let's put a dent in
the mountain of allegedly obsolete computers otherwise destined for
unsafe disposal or the landfill. Let's help Slave Lake put funding
into more important things than software license fees and pricey
hardware they don't actually need.

With experience in aboriginal organizations, a location in Edmonton,
connections in Athabasca (where an evacuation center is located) and
experience converting computers to GNU/Linux or free software on
Windows, I am in a unique position to coordinate aid for Slave Lake.

I'll be over at the temporary shelter in Edmonton to see what I can do
for the people who are staying there, both in the short term and when
they start rebuilding.

Sincerely,

Ralp Pichie


For those of you who are not familiar with free/open source software
or computer recycling/re-use, here are  some links:

Ubuntu Canada Local Team web site: http://ubuntu-ca.org/
Ubuntu main site: http://www.ubuntu.com/
Free software at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
Free Geek Vancouver: http://freegeekvancouver.org/
Linux for Aboriginal beings  http://tinyurl.com/3d939t4


If you missed this important bit of Canadian news:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/05/17/slave-lake-tues.html




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