RISC-V International's plan to give away 1,000 boards to developers seems like a good idea. I like some of the products I've seen but the cheap ones are just toys and the decent ones are way overpriced.
Anecdotally, a guy in the Fedora project took a chance on giving a free OLPC laptop to a random education student in the middle of nowhere Utah. We met at a Panda Express in a strip mall. He helped me with some random problems I had on my ubuntu laptop and gave me a list of good resources to learn python.
I never did deliver for the OLPC project, but I tested a lot of things other people were working on. I also finally grokked the free software idea and became and engineer instead of a history teacher.
The $250 or so of prototype hardware has been repaid in testing, bug reporting other things I was able to do then. It sits on a shelf in my office to remind me how I got started, and what it mean to really be a part of a community that takes risks to invest in newcomers.
That's a very neat story. I have always loved the idea of paying things forward - investing in things or people in which you yourself do not see the direct return. Thanks for sharing.