Empowering children through coding, computer languages

A s a youngster, Shweta Mukesh used to teach English and Mathematics to underprivileged children near her locality. During that time, she realised that these students aren’t much aware of what’s happening in the tech industry. She decided to teach them how to use computers and think structurally. After completing her studies, Shweta started an initiative called KidsWhoKode that helps children learn the basics of coding.

“We have advanced a lot in terms of technology and it is important for today’s children to get introduced to artificial intelligence, robotics, etc. I decided to start with coding for children and that’s how KidsWhoKode was formed. We started as a pilot project — for the first six months, we tried different models,” she says.

Shweta wanted to bridge the gap between less privileged children and others when it comes to exposure to knowledge. KidsWhoKode primarily focusses on low-income and government schools across the country.

“Generally, children are curious to learn about technology and its developments. They pick up professional coding languages within a short time. So, it is easy for our facilitators to teach them. We work with schools in urban, semi-urban and rural regions across the country. Since we cannot reach out to schools in many parts of India, we collaborate with NGOs, corporates and other institutions who are ready to teach technology to kids. So far, the team has trained 35,000 children in coding and various software languages,” explains the 28-year-old entrepreneur.

Apart from keeping kids interested in technology, this process also helps them learn to work in teams, think creatively, grasp language faster, helps in academics, sharpen their problem-solving and critical thinking skills. “We have designed our programmes in such a way that we make sure everything that we teach are industry-relevant. These are the things they need to know when they get into a job. A lot of our content is built by people who are leading engineers or technicians in major companies,” she remarks.