High school student from U.S. teaches rural children in Coimbatore to develop apps

Kavin Saravanan offered 8-week programme to students of school in Mulanoor

A casual conversation with his uncle prompted 17-year-old Kavin Saravanan, a high school student at Adrian Wilcox High School in California, U.S., to offer free coding classes to students in rural areas around Coimbatore and enable them develop apps

When the pandemic began in 2020, Kavin felt the first-hand challenges that distance learning posed to some students.

Since he was part of the teen council at his local library in Santa Clara, Kavin started offering free virtual mobile app development sessions to young children in his neighborhood. While talking to his uncle in India, Kavin came to know that students in rural Tamil Nadu had limited access to technological education.

To do what he could to bridge the digital gap, Kavin used the tools at hand to come up with new lesson formats that would resolve the paucity of resources. With the help of his uncle, he spoke to Pradeep, the correspondent of Vanjiamman Vidya Vikas, a school in Mulanoor in Dharapuram in Tiruppur district and offered to provide free virtual app development classes to the students.

Mr. Pradeep says, “Our school is situated in a rural area, so our students have very little opportunity for app development and exposure to technology in general. Kavin initiated a free 8-week app development training session for our students from grade 6 to grade 9. At the end of the session, we saw a tremendous interest in app development among our students. In the midst of his busy schedule during his junior year at high school, Kavin also organised an app development competition and awarded prizes to the winners.

“Building apps, in my view, is a creative and liberating experience that helps solve real-world problems. I want to teach students not just the basics of app development but also its real-world relevance. I also seek to provide students with the opportunity to create, and not just consume, technology. The culmination point for my sessions has been an assignment of group projects where students develop and apply 21st-century learning skills like critical thinking, perseverance, collaboration, and communication,” says Kavin.

He plans to work with his friends to widen his outreach to benefit more students through this initiative.