Formation March 2008 Membership 168 Chairman Abhishek Indoria | Type Non-profit Official language Multilingual | |
Square-Point is a world-wide internet based non-profit organization, which provides aspiring teenage programmers in third world country a platform to develop their own programs and help the community with the children living in the developing and the third world countries by providing them resources to be familiar with the latest educational technologies and software and hardware with help of one laptop per child. All of the Square-Point's members are teenagers and Square-Point doesn't accept membership requests from anyone above age of 20.
Contents
Introduction
Square-Point was first created with the mission "To help children from third world countries to reach their potential." Square-Point targeted to program applications and software suits suitable for the use of children around the world.Square-Point is led by Abhishek Indoria, and Angelina Johnson. As of May 2010, Square-Point has over fifteen pilot projects in Third World countries. The organization's name was changed from Phoenix-Team to Square-Point in March 2010.
Joint Work with One Laptop Per Child
In June 2009, a statement from Square-Point followed that it will program software for one laptop per child from now on. Square-Point, since then, is independently developing its own software and implementing them for OLPC XO-1 as well as various other platforms.
Mission and Organisation Structure
Mission statement from Square-Point reads "To provide free educational software to children living in the third world countries where they can't get access to proper technology and don't have proper resources to do so.The intended children's age is 5-16 years for which Square-Point intend to provide enough resources to help them get educated in field of computers."
Square Team has its own internal organization structure. The chairman and the Chief Programmer Officer are responsible for major decisions, including the structural and re-enforcing tasks. "The Point team" is responsible for programming structure and solutions while "The Phoenix-S" team is responsible for support tasks. The Phoenix-Square team is responsible for compatibility issues, public relations, beta testing, and recruiting members. The Phoenix-Squad helps in locating and supporting the pilot projects.
Current Projects
As referred to in Square-Point's website, the team is currently working on a few projects which claim to be
Deployments
Currently, several of Square-Point members are deployed world-wide, most prominent of which are United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Latvia, Ghana, Brasil, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia, Nepal, Burma, Sudan, Haiti, Spain, France, Paraguay and India.
Founders
Square-Point's founder and current chairman, Abhishek Indoria was also founder of FOSSFY(Free & Open Source Software For Youth foundation) and co-founder of Eduvix, an organization providing open source educational solutions. Square-Point's Chief Programming Officer (CPO), Angelina Johnson is a student living in Sussex, England. Johnson was co-founder of Eduvix.
Criticism
Square-Point has been criticised for its age limits on membership.