PortoSeguro

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Work in progress... Translating from Italian PaoloSammicheli

Interview Questions

  • How was the Porto Seguro Project born?

The project started thanks to Luigi Pertici, a Catholical Permanet Deacon from Siena, Italy. He worked at Montepaschi bank's datacenter for long time until he switched to work as IT Engineer in the Bank's Training Center doing end-to-end support, system administration and so on. In 1998 he knew a togolese priest who talked him about his country and then, in 2005, Luigi went for his first time in Togo. From 2005 Luigi visits Togo regularly to help the Aneho's Diocese and in particular the village called Adbodrafò which has almost 4000/6000 inhabitant. It's not possible to know exactly the actual living population there due to lack of a well managed registry office. Since 2007, when Luigi retired from his work at bank, he spend 4/5 months in a year in Adbodrafò.

  • What is the mission of your organisation?

The project is trying to bring information's media in the village of Agbodrafò. At moment the newspaper is the only media and it's very rare; you can found it only in the capital but not everyday. The basical idea is to set up a public point of access to Internet available for everybody but mainly focused for the high school's students. Local's high school counts about 200 students.

  • Can you give us a few examples of what you have done?

With the help of my friends from Siena Linux User Group we gather old computers from friends and acquaintances. Lug's volunteers buit fully functioning computers getting spare parts from partialy working computers and installing Ubuntu. At the end of the work they made a shipment with a lot of material: fully functioning Computer were 36 with a lot of extra spare parts like monitors, mice and keyboards.

  • Other Software

    • Did you also use other linux distros?

At moment we used just Ubuntu (and derivates). In the future we would like to create a small Lab where to teach how to customize a distro and also how to build one from Scratch.

  • Did you also use proprietary software?

No, we use only Free Software. Our target is to let people learn how to choose their own software and we can't use proprietary software because in proprietary software the software maker decided what to package for you and this limits the software you can choose. We want to change the habit to have all the software packaged and chose by a software company. Often this habit depends from cultural factors this is why this is a educational project.

No. Viene usato solo Software Libero. L'obiettivo educativo è quello di insegnare a scegliere e decidere con la propria testa, per questo scopo il Software Proprietario non è usabile perché offre tutto "preconfezionato"; e proprio cercare di far cambiare l'abitudine a ricevere tutto "preconfezionato" - abitudine che è un fatto culturale molto radicato - è uno dei principali obbiettivi di un progetto, anche educativo, più ampio.

  • Suggestions

    • What do you suggest that should be done in Ubuntu to better match your needs?

I would like to have more documentation and support for old hardware. For example i had problems with scaners. We use scanners a lot because it can do copies of a document thanks to a printer. In our village we have only 3 scanners and they don't work all the time. Also the offline resources could be better. I spend a lot of time copying ubuntu-it wiki into an external hard drive for later reading when i need in Africa where there is lack of connection.

Andrebbe migliorato il supporto e la documentazione con l'hardware vecchio. Ad esempio la configurazione dello scanner è stata veramente un'impresa, per altro ancora non del tutto soddisfacente perché Xane si comporta in modo strano. Lo scanner è molto utile perché accoppiato con una stampante può fungere anche da fotocopiatrice, considerando che in tutto il villaggio ce ne sono 3 e non sempre funzionanti. Bisognerebbe inoltre migliorare il supporto alle situazioni in cui ci troviamo senza rete. Ad esempio la copia offline del wiki di Ubuntu-it è una bella idea. Sarebbe utile avere altre risorse di questo tipo. Prima di partire per il Togo passo diverso tempo a copiarmi tutto il necessario su un Hard Disk esterno.

  • Experiences

    • What is the biggest difficulty you encountered with Ubuntu?

Scanner configuration and old hardware support

La configurazione dello scanner e l'hardware "datato"

  • and what do you think is the best trick you learned along the way?

Use 3 partitions: root, swap and home. Having my documents in home avoids data losing when i install Ubuntu over my previous installation.

A fare sempre 3 partizioni: una root, una swap e una home. Così se c'è qualcosa che non va e devo reinstallare tutto non perdo i dati utente.

  • Photos and stories

    • Ask if there's particular anecdotes, good or funny stories, best lessons that reporter would like to tell to the world.

In 2007 i took some pictures of children in a school. In one of them i got a child playing with a hand-made toy. In the next trip in Africa i showed the pic to the priest, my friend, and i asked if he know that child. He said that he knew him and he was a 10 years old child called Ako. I asked to the priest if i could see him again. After some days he came in front of me while i was deassembling 3 pcs to make 1 of them working. I asked the child his name and he said something i can't understand. I gave him my laptop and i said to him to write his name. He started looking at the laptop and at the keyboard. Then i asked him. Have you ever seen a computer? He said no. I was stunk but i came back in fixing the pc. The child was looking at me and playing with a screw when i said him if he liked what i was doing. He answered yes and i gave him one of the three pc. In a short time with some advices the child was able to disassemble a pc... and it was the first time Ako saw a pc in his life!

Nel 2007 avevo fatto diverse foto ai bambini della scuola, una in particolare la ricordavo bene, era di un bambino che giocava con un "giocattolo" che aveva costruito da solo. In un viaggio successivo mostrai questa foto al parroco chiedendo se conoscesse il bambino. Il parroco mi rispose che era uno scolaro di 10 anni che si chiama Ako. Chiesi al parroco di farmelo conoscere. Me lo portò un pomeriggio in cui mi trovavo nei locali della parrocchia impegnato a smontare 3 computer cercando di farne uno funzionante. Chiesi al bambino quale fosse il suo cognome ed egli pronunciò qualcosa di incomprensibile; non avendo fra le mani nulla di meglio per farlo scrivere, chiesi al bambino di digitare il suo cognome nella tastiera del mio portatile. Egli la osservò un poco e poi iniziò a scrivere il suo cognome. Chiesi, come mai guardi così la tastiera, non hai mai visto un computer? Il bambino rispose di no. Abbastanza colpito, ripresi la mia opera di smontaggio mentre il bambino, incuriosito, era rimasto lì in piedi a guardarmi rigirandosi un cacciavite fra le mani; gli chiesi se voleva fare quello che stavo facendo io e al suo sì gli affidai uno dei pc. In poco tempo e senza rompere niente, con solo qualche mio richiamo a fare attenzione, smontò completamente uno dei 3 desktop. E quella era la prima volta che Ako vedeva un pc!

Informazioni

Name of reporter: Luigi Pertici <luigiATpertici.net> Traduzione: Vincenzo Ampolo <vincenzoATgmail.com>

Name of NGO: Onlus Progetto Porto Seguro (in corso di costituzione)

Location (city, country): Agbodrafò (Togo)

Web Link: Original interview (in Italian)


CategoryNGO