For 20 middle school students from the Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Saidapet, the last three days have given them an insight into computers, coding and the internet.
The workshop was conducted by Code Your Chances (CYC), a non-profit organisation which was founded at Oxford by graduate students Dominic Feroze and Dominique Roberts.
“We founded CYC with the aim to reach out to underprivileged girl students across the world and give them exposure to technology as well as the opportunities available for them,”said Ms. Dominique. The team, also comprising Gabrielle Roberts, Andrew Spatafora and Nimisha Sara Philip said that it was their first workshop.
“We are working towards building a more sustainable presence and conducting more such programmes for students. We collaborated with a team of six Computer Science students from IIT-Madras who also helped us teach the students during the workshop,” Mr. Dominic said.
The initiative was supported by the British Council, Chennai and the Association of British Scholars, and the CYC had also partnered with the Teach for India in Chennai.
P.M. Beliappa, a retired civil servant from the ABS and Mei Kwei Barker, Director of British Council South India, gave away the certificates to the students who participated in the workshop.
“We were taught how to use search engines online, basic programs such as Microsoft word and were also taught about robotics. We learnt HTML and created a website as well,” said Monica, a student.
