LIMA, Peru--(BUSINESS WIRE)--President of Peru, Alan Garcia, announced today the expansion of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program and the establishment of local facilities for the manufacturing of XO laptops in the country.

Peru has committed to work with OLPC in manufacturing the new model, XO 1.75, in the country as well as continuing to support its children with a nationwide deployment. Peru and OLPC aim to start production of the XO laptop 1.75 by the end of the year.

To date, Peru has distributed nearly 600,000 XO laptops to primary school children, and an additional 250,000 will be ready for distribution to secondary school students by mid-year 2011. With almost one million laptops deployed in the country and a new commitment to reach one million by year end, Peru has covered 15 percent of registered school children reaching 100 percent of public schools countrywide.

“Peru is developing a competitive and world-class education, allowing the students to create their own learning environment,” said Rodrigo Arboleda, CEO of One Laptop per Child. “Being the largest deployment worldwide, Peru is an outstanding example of the OLPC program. It is our hope to see other countries establish manufacturing facilities of the scale and magnitude of Peru” continues Rodrigo Arboleda “Local manufacturing of the XO laptops will enable Peru to meet the objectives of educational transformation, but also to make important investments in its economy in the short term.”

Additionally, Peru and Lego’s Education group have started distribution of 92,000 WeDo toolkits in classrooms with XOs in 20,000 schools across the country. LEGO WeDo toolkits incorporate programming software and design activities fully articulated in the Peruvian curriculum. With a major focus on robotics constructionism, the XO laptop becomes the best tool to facilitate this process, which inspires children’s creativity and technical aptitude.

The XO 1.75, uses a Marvell Armada 600 ARM processor with lower power consumption, making it the most energy efficient laptop in the market.

In addition, Peru is playing a significant role in developing applications for Sugar, the learning platform that runs on the XO laptop. Engineers in Lima have written interactive learning games; a team in Puno is translating the software into Aymara and Quechua; and a curriculum guide written by a Peruvian teacher has been recently translated into French for schools to use it in Madagascar -- all further evidence of the great impact that the Ministry of Education (MEC)-OLPC project has had both domestically and globally.

About the One Laptop per Child

One Laptop per Child (OLPC at http://www.laptop.org) is a nonprofit organization created by Nicholas Negroponte and others from the MIT Media Lab to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are inexpensive enough to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education.

About Sugar Labs®

Sugar Labs, a volunteer-driven, nonprofit organization, is a member project of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Originally part of the One Laptop Per Child project, Sugar Labs coordinates volunteers around the world who are passionate about providing educational opportunities to children through the Sugar Learning Platform. Sugar Labs is supported by donations and is seeking funding and volunteers to accelerate development. For more information, please visit http://www.sugarlabs.org. Sugar Labs is a registered trademark of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Other names are trademarks of their respective owners.