Express News Service
KOCHI: A group of students from engineering colleges across the state have been utilising the lockdown period to improve their skills in the field of computer technology, thanks to TinkerHub Foundation, a non-profit techie community based in the city.A ‘learn from home’ programme was initiated by the foundation during the lockdown to equip students with novel technical skill sets. The two-week-long course covered topics like user experience design, python programming, web development and Go-programming language. The team received 2,500 registrations. The course also offers one-on-one mentoring under technical experts from the foundation. This has helped a few students land internships in various companies too.
TinkerHub started off as a community of students from Cusat who got together after class hours to teach each other computing skills. It registered as a non-profit in 2016, and has a dedicated team spearheading its journey for the past two years. Abid Aboobacker, former product owner at Truecaller), Moosa Mehar, ex-project coordinator at Kerala Startup Mission), Nidhiya V Raj, Head VC at Nvidia and Praveen Sridhar, machine learning researcher are the core board members and founders of TinkerHub.
“The job market today requires people with skills. So, to remain relevant, one should have a commitment to life-long learning. For students, it is important to learn outside their curriculum, which may not be updated about new advancements. We strive to develop a self- learning culture among students. During the lockdown, our courses were designed in such a way that students were expected to complete a project on a topic to be able to attend one-on-one mentoring,” said Moosa.
They currently have campus communities in 15 colleges in the state with 50-250 student members each. Instagram and Telegram are the main platforms used to connect the community members. Entrepreneurs, innovators and tech enthusiasts who are part of the group act as mentors to the students on a voluntary basis.
“Being a part of the community has given me access to many industry experts. The mentors are always available to clarify any doubts we might have on starting a venture or learning a new language,” said Ganga Manoj, a final year student of RIT, Kottayam.TinkerHub is a recognized community partner of Kerala Startup Mission. Its MoUs and partnerships with global technology leaders like DigitalOcean make their students easily employable and competent.
