Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2023

Empowering Indigenous Communities: Breaking the Wall to Empowering Indigenous Communities in STEAM

2022 2022 Winner | Science Engagement Science Engagement

Young Tinker Academy is a tinker space where school students collaborate and learn hands-on skills of the future. We work with indigenous communities to build tinker spaces for students and youths with content in the vernacular Indian languages.

We have impacted the lives of 1,50,000+ students and youths in rural India. 70% of them are girls and women. Our aim is to empower indigenous communities by providing them access to STEAM labs and content in local languages.

We have set up a tinker space with machines such as 3D printers, CNC and laser cutters, and robotics equipment with interfaces in indigenous languages.

Vaishali Sharma

Young Tinker Academy

Vaishali Sharma is an Indian engineer, innovator and revolutionary educationist. She is the co-founder of Young Tinker Academy and Navonmesh Prasar Foundation, which was founded in 2015 to educate the less-privileged students of rural India through an interdisciplinary curriculum. She is also known for designing innovative labs, teaching tools, and indigenous projects which solve real-life problems. Her team at Navonmesh Prasar Foundation has impacted the lives of 1,50,000+ students across India. She’s shortlisted among the top 130 women entrepreneurs for Women Transforming India Award by NITI Aayog, Government of India.

She has over 5 years of experience across multiple and global functions including Operations Management, Alternative Education Consulting and Content development across multiple service-lines and education sectors. Vaishali has significant experience in the tech industry and has set up, led and developed social entrepreneurs for several global technologies and consulting organizations.

She’s a strong leader in driving strategic and complex transformation and education revolution across Digital, application and infrastructure. Having a blend of strong strategic expertise combined with the ability to transform operations and cultures, she has successfully created Non-profit initiatives, wherever she’s been accountable.

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