Amazon.com will start selling One Laptop Per Child's low-cost XO notebook computer as part of the Give One, Get One program the OLPC developed last year, an OLPC official said yesterday.
The nonprofit organization started Give One, Get One as a way to raise money to send laptops to schoolchildren in poor countries. The idea is that a person pays for two of the XO laptops developed by OLPC. One is sent to the buyer, and another is donated to a child in a developing country.
This year, OLPC teamed up with a Web retailer instead of running the program itself, said Matt Keller, director of Europe, Middle East and Africa at OLPC.
Amazon.com will start selling XO laptops under the Give One, Get One program in late November. Sales will likely extend through the end of December.
"We're a small group of people," said Keller, explaining the rationale for working with Amazon.com.
A few thousand volunteers help with software development and other projects at OLPC, he said, but the core group itself is just 25 people.