IIT-M’s mentorship programme reaches 800 rural students

The programme, now into its second year, has reached over 800 students of 20 schools in the districts of Thiruvallur, Kanchipuram and Vellore. The initiative is fully funded by Verizon India, as part of Verizon’s commitment to empowering rural communities by addressing barriers to digital inclusion.

Mentor groups from IIT-Madras research Labs comprising MS, MTech students, PhD scholars and faculty from different science and engineering departments adopt rural Government Higher Secondary Schools. 

Each laboratory visits their respective adopted high school to train and mentor the students for two to three years through a structured and expansive curriculum that spans topics such as experiential learning, device engineering and skills development and career guidance.

The labs typically carry simple devices used in everyday life like Electric Iron, Calling Bell, and Vacuum Cleaner during these visits. Dismantling and assembling of the devices by the school students, interactions through question and answer- and demonstration-based lectures by the graduate students of IIT Madras are some of the learning activities that happen during the training.

The IIT-Madras faculty also visit the schools with their respective labs at least once to inspire and motivate the young minds. All the participating labs have visited their respective connected schools ten times since 2018 and have spent a whole day with the students of the school during every visit.

Highlighting the unique aspects of this initiative, Dr Pijush Ghosh, project lead and Associate Professor, Department of Applied Mechanics, IIT-Madras, said “20 research laboratories of IIT-Madras have been connected to 20 rural schools since June 2018 with over 150 graduate students from the Institute has trained over 800 students studying in the 9th Grade.”