The MagPi - February 2020

Pranjali Pathak

Bringing computer science to underprivileged children

in India is a priority for this engineer turned educator

L

ike a few educators in the

Raspberry Pi and digital

making community,

Pranjali Pathak of the Pi Jam

Foundation started out life as

an engineer before becoming

a teacher. She’s been a fellow

for Teach for India, where she

taught students from grade 3,

and brought that experience

to the Pi Jam Foundation as a

Program Lead, making sure

educators are supported when

teaching computing.

Pranjali Pathak

“Pi Jam Foundation is a

Section 8 (not-for-profit)

organisation,” Pranjali tells us.

“The organisation is entirely

impact driven and aims to

provide all students from under-

resourced schools [with]

computing and problem-solving

skills, which are essential for

them to succeed in the 21st

century workplace. Using low-

cost, open-source technology,

Raspberry Pi and a contextual

research-based curriculum

coupled with innovative

pedagogy, Pi Jam Foundation

aims to provide quality computer

education to over 100,000

students across India by 2022.

We have successfully brought a

globally relevant, yet contextual

computer science education to

8000+ students across under-

resourced schools across urban,

suburban, and rural geographies

of the country.”

What are your links to

Raspberry Pi?

We work extensively on

Raspberry Pi [computers] across

all our Pi Lab programs and feel

the Code Clubs would enable us

to enhance our curriculum and

provide students from different

grades and diverse economic

backgrounds access to

knowledge at par with global

standards. Also, being [more]

affordable than existing PCs in

the market lends itself to use in

the context we operate in, i.e.

under-resourced public schools.

What kind of events have you

put on/supported?

Pi Lab is an award-winning

flagship programme that

enables a complete computer

science ecosystem (Raspberry Pi,

best of open-source tools, and

highly contextualised curriculum

and teacher training

Pranjali tries to make

sure that girls get

plenty of input to make

up for the gender bias

Day job Program lead > Community role Community support > URL thepijam.org

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