My name is Nikhil Lingutla and I am a fellow at Teach For India. I teach 120 extremely curious Grade 7 and 8 students at Government Kannada English Model Primary School, KP Agrahara, Bengaluru. My background includes a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Oregon State University in the USA. I also have four years of experience working as a software engineer at VMWare, Palo Alto, California before leaving it all to join the Teach for India fellowship.

Because of COVID, the current academic year is moving online, and this is generating acute stress among students and families with no digital access. Parents are concerned about the continued education of their wards, and students are anxious about missing out relative to their peers, and under-stimulated by the continued stay-at-home orders. 70% of students enrolled in our classrooms only have access to feature phones and will not be able to participate in any online education offerings.

Our goal is to support 80 students with access to education. To this end, we are raising Rs 5,20,000 to cover the costs of basic smartphones with 4G access.