July’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Rishabh and I started Navgurukul to answer a simple question — Can we train students from marginalized backgrounds in a year to be good Software Engineers? And the answer is, yes we can. In fact we can do so much more. To build a system with no teachers, no campus stuff, it took Rishabh and me more than just three years to prove the viability and potential of such an approach.

Rishabh decided to step down as the COO in October 2019 as he became interested in researching and eventually work on careers that help us in regenerating ourselves, the earth’s natural systems and communities.

Navgurukul at the same time was making a turn towards being 2.0 with scale at its core and an organisational structure that can withstand any challenge. In last 9 months, we have came up a long way to have a team consisting of 9 diverse people supported by 10+ dedicated volunteers who bring their expertise and time.

The Good

1. New education policy mandates coding from class 6th. In rural schools, teachers still remain untrained in basics of computer despite many initiatives. What may be an attempt to bridge the digital divide, in reality, may be grossly insufficient unless accompanied by a definitive road-map from the states and the sector.
2. Apart from running our residential centers, we are now running online courses with 300+ students already enrolled.
3. With Wingify’s support we are working on an android application to teach programming in vernacular through schools and colleges. A first version would be out this month. Shoutout to Annu, Suhaib, Abhishek, Namrata, Parul for their help.
4. Manisha joined our team this month. She is going to head our online program — Code Stars and outreach for admissions.
5. Partnered with GirlScript for online classes.
6. We have been working significantly on our own capacity building.

Shoutout to Apni Shala for conducting a 3-day workshop on emotional-social well-being.

The Bad

1. Coronavirus is on a steep rise. It is directly affecting the emotional state of the team.
2. Most of our team members are our own alumni, working on such mature problems at this young age is often hard.

We need your help

1. Laptops. Corona has created a shortage of laptops so if you or your company has spare laptops/desktops in working condition, let us know and we will arrange a collection.
2. Volunteer. Please add your name here and we will reach out to you.

Stay safe and take care of yourself and people around you. Empathy and love in times like these can take us miles ahead. :-)