It seems like just about every day I come across some new cool and innovative approach to online learning. Like Harvard Law starting to conduct classes in Second Life. Or this…

Adventurer to open first Antarctic education base

All this is going to be a lot of fun to watch…and to help make happen.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I’m doing this for the child in Africa who is going to use free textbooks and reference works produced by our community and find a solution to the crushing poverty that surrounds him.
-Jimmy Wales speaking about Wikipedia

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what my fundamental values are. Or maybe more precisely, what my fundamental value is. In the last few weeks it has become abundantly clear to me. My fundamental value is to make equal access to education a reality for everyone on the planet.

People have been striving for equality for centuries. Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission was equality for blacks in America. Nelson Mandela’s mission was equality and freedom from apartheid in South Africa. And while we’ve made a lot of progess towards equality the fact of the matter is that we’re still a long ways from true equality.

We’re currently based in Los Angeles and like most major cities there is significant inequality in the way kids are educated. The child going to school in Beverly Hills or Manhattan Beach is going to get, on average, a much better education than the kid growing up in Compton or Inglewood (spent a good amount of time in a school in the latter so I’ve seen this first hand). And when we expand our consciousness to look at the global situation the differences become even more striking. The boy or girl growing up in Ghana or Ethiopia simply doesn’t have the same resources as the boy or girl growing up in a posh suburb of any major urban area.

Without equal access to a world-class education true equality cannot exist.

Bono was quoted recently in Time Magazine as saying, “It is–or it ought to be–unacceptable that an accident of longitude and latitude determines whether a child lives or dies.” I agree 100% with that. And I also feel that it should be unacceptable than an accident of longitude and latitude determines the quality of a child’s education.

Just a decade ago it was hard to imagine a child in Africa growing up listening to the best lecturers from Harvard and MIT. Today, with things like the sub-$100 laptop and mesh networking we’re almost there. The power of that idea is immense.

The next Einstein might be growing up in Madagascar right now.

The next Oprah might be a kindergarten girl in Sierra Leone.

There’s a lot to be done in this world. I often liken what groups like the One campaign and AMREF are doing to throwing life preservers to people who are drowning. Sitting on the shore and lecturing them on how to swim doesn’t help the current situation. But if people never learn to swim they’re going to find themselves in the same situation again and again in the future.

Which is why it has to be about empowerment.

What companies like Kiva are doing. What (God willing) we’ll do. This indeed is our generation’s Moon Shot. Our opportunity to have a world that allows everyone an equal shot at greatness. An equal shot to realize their potential and live their dreams. It’s within our grasp.

It’s time to get to work.