My friend Michael isn't as sold on the XO $100 laptop as I am. His gripe is that kids in the Third World need food to eat, water pumps that work, can openers, pencils and paper.... What follows is my reply to his email to that effect, which was also copied to a couple of other interested parties who are part of this conversation.

My friend Steve Popper travels the globe purchasing lumber. He says that traveling from the airport to his meetings in the third world is horrendous - the poverty is so incredible, he doesn't even like to look out the car window. So a few years ago he and his family established a school in a village in Haiti. He figured, "Hey, there's no school; that's why these kids will spend their whole lives in penury. Let's fix that." Steve's upper-middle-class; I think a school in Haiti is pretty affordable.

The problem is that the kids didn't learn much in their new school. The reason? They were hungry. I can't pay attention if I'm late for snack time. I can't even imagine what it's like for kids who are actually starving. So Steve did some research and found Kids Against Hunger. He brought it to our Rotary club, and in less than a month, in two events he - and a few hundred of his closest friends - packaged over 600,000 meals. About half went to the poor here in SWFL, the remainder to Haiti and Jamaica - the poorest parts in the South of Jamaica, hit worst by Dean. To avoid pilfering (99% of foreign aid to Haiti is stolen, mostly by the gov.), we sent the meals to Rotary clubs in the villages where the food is needed. We have 8 more packaging events lined up this season.

Poor people need food. And fresh water, and shoes, and $.01 drops of medicine to fight ringworm, and affordable (but not free) condoms, and mosquito netting.... People need education and micro credit, too, so that they can take care of themselves, rather than hope that the largess from America continues unabated. My vote is, if this guy or that group is passionate about one of those things, then why tell them to wait until other needs have been met first? Steve wants to feed kids, I want to give them laptops, and Michael wants them to have can openers. They need all 3, so good for all of us! By pursuing what inspires us most, we'll each be more effective and we'll stay engaged longer.

Now, to introduce Tim Falconer: he is well ahead of me in his efforts to get the XO to the kids who need it. He and some friends (www.waveplace.com) are about to start a project with some XOs in St. John (the US Virgin Island). It's a small population - only about twice as many kids as Immokalee. And, like Immokalee, if you want to make a living wage, you have to leave to do it.

Waveplace isn't just going to buy laptops from MIT and hand them over to a bunch of kids, then split town. Their project includes teaching the children how to use the laptops, and really it's about teaching them effectively through the conduit of a laptop. Tim's idea is to train the children of the Caribbean, starting with St. John, to apply their creative talents to IT work, sourced all over the globe via the Internet.

Kids in poverty world-wide are physically removed from the teachers and resources they need to have an education that is every bit as good as, say, our two girls here in Naples. But with an XO and a Internet connection, these children can enjoy access to the best the world has to offer. My good friend and colleague, Tim King, who is running Coine Language School for us up in Boston, has done a lot of real-time tutoring over the years through an online course out of Taiwan. Because of the XO, kids in St. John will be able to have world-class teachers like Tim King at their disposal.

What a brave new world is this!