NEW YORK, Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- To mark the International Day for Peace, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization whose mission is to help provide every child in the world access to a modern education, awarded Shakira for her accomplishments in promoting education and Internet connectivity as a pathway for peace in her native Colombia through her nonprofit foundation, Fundacion Pies Descalzos.    

The Internet for Peace award given to Shakira and her foundation was presented today by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC, at an event hosted by Wired Magazine Italy in New York City at the Paley Center for Media. The award is named for the Internet for Peace project launched by Wired Magazine Italy to nominate the Internet as a candidate for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. The Internet for Peace Project, supported by many leading non-governmental organizations, believes that the Internet is a powerful tool that promotes freedom of expression, while fostering the global spread of democracy and is deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize.

"Shakira and her foundation have been visionary in introducing technology to Colombia's most impoverished schools, opening a world of learning for students through Internet-connected computers," Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC, said.      

Through her foundation, Shakira promotes access among children to modern education and connectivity with OLPC XO laptops in schools in impoverished areas in Barranquilla, as well as in the outskirts of Bogota. These programs are innovative, but still require more support in order to grow to reach more schools and cities in Colombia and internationally.  

"Only 10 percent of the population in Colombia has access to the Internet," Shakira said. "Fundacion Pies Descalzos brings new technologies to our schools."

OLPC is a global leader in the development and implementation of education projects in developing and remote communities throughout the world, including Fundacion Pies Descalzos projects in Barranquilla. To date, 1.5 million Internet-ready OLPC XO laptops have been distributed to children throughout the world, with exemplary projects in Rwanda, Peru and Uruguay, where every primary student owns his or her own connected XO laptop.    

About One Laptop per Child

One Laptop per Child (OLPC at http://www.laptop.org) is a non-profit 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.  

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SOURCE One Laptop per Child