OPIC’s Robert Drumheller and Maria Goravanchi recently met with primary school children at Ibrahim School in Jenin, West Bank who were reading in both Arabic and English on their netbooks after school. An OPIC loan is expected to distribute between 100,000 and 280,000 computers to school children there over the next ten years.
The Netketabi – Arabic for ‘my netbook’ – project is using a $10 million OPIC loan to sell netbook computers to parents through a microloan program facilitated by the Alrafah Microfinance Bank. The local project sponsor, Partners for Sustainable Development (PSD), was founded by U.S. based Global Catalyst Foundation (GCF), which supports innovative projects to improve education, alleviate poverty, and promote social tolerance in around the world.
PSD will purchase the Netbooks from Intel’s local distributor, Offtech.
Loan officer underwrites a pre-approved parent to put a deposit on a netbook for their child in Jenin, West Bank, Palestinian Territories. The parent then pays the laptop off in monthly installments.
