![[A GNU head]](/web/20141222035353im_/http://www.gnu.org/graphics/heckert_gnu.small.png)
GNU Operating SystemThanks to your support, 2015 marks 30 years of the FSF! In the next 30 years, we want to do even more to defend computer user rights. To kick off in that direction, we're setting our highest-ever fundraising goal of $525,000 by January 31st. Read more.
English [en] Deutsch [de] español [es] français [fr] hrvatski [hr] italiano [it] 日本語 [ja] українська [uk]
Ambedkar Community Computing Center (AC3)
The following information was submitted to us by the group of volunteers working at the Center.
Location
The Center is located in the Sudharshan Layout off Bannerghatta Road in Bangalore, State of Karnataka, India.
About
The Ambedkar Community Computing Center is not a private or public educational institution, it is a computing education center run by youths from a local group called Ambedkar Sanga that works in the slums of the area.
The Center was founded in 2007 in an effort to bring the world of computers close to underprivileged children and youths who otherwise would have little opportunity to get in contact with this technology.
The group consists of around 15 children and young boys and girls from 13 to 23 years old. They attend classes 3 times a week for 2 hours each session.
Motivation
The area in which this Center is located lacks even the most basic living conditions. We feel that the kids from this place should get a good thirst for Freedom while learning computing too, and Free Software serves this purpose. Free Software is a way to talk about Freedom.
How We Did It
No migration process was involved. We are Free Software advocates so we started directly by installing Free Software in all computers in use; therefore, we haven't faced any particular difficulties in setting up the systems. Our main difficulty regards the lack of hardware. We use only laptops, and we need as many as we can get. We rely on donations for our work.
Commitment to Free Software
We have five work stations, all of which are laptops and all of them run fully free operating systems.
All of the programs we use are Free Libre software. For example, we use LibreOffice for spreadsheets and for general document writing, and GIMP for graphics.
Results
Browsing the web using Free Software helps these young boys and girls to have access to the external world in safety and confidence. Free Libre graphic programs such as GIMP allow them to express their creativity freely and easily.
One of the underprivileged kids who attends classes at the Center has achieved a high level of skill in the use of GIMP. His works have been presented and sold at a local Free Software conference. The picture on the right shows him handing in to Richard Stallman a copy of an essay titled “The Future is Ours”, which was produced at the Center.
Some of the kids who attend our classes also take computing courses at school. They report that the skills they learn at the Center are of invaluable help for them to follow and pass those courses successfully.
We are informed that the outstanding effort of Free Software volunteers is expanding in these deprived areas of the city, with remarkable results. If you would like to contribute or donate laptops to this group, please contact us at <[email protected]>.
The image on this page is licensed under the CC-BY-SA, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
“Our mission is to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of Free Software users.”
The Free Software Foundation is the principal organizational sponsor of the GNU Operating System. Support GNU and the FSF by buying manuals and gear, joining the FSF as an associate member, or making a donation, either directly to the FSF or via Flattr.