Cal High Junior's Nonprofit Teaches Coding To Underprivileged Youth

SAN RAMON, CA — A California High School junior received a President’s Volunteer Service Award and an acknowledgement from San Ramon Vice Mayor Sridhar Verose for founding a nonprofit to teach computer science and coding to underprivileged students. Through his nonprofit Pi Kids, Inc., Sayam De and 18 other high school volunteers have led a number of coding workshops and classes in libraries and schools throughout the Bay Area.

Sayam De was first inspired to found Pi Kids at a young age when he met the daughter of his family’s cleaning person, who was around his age.

“At my early elementary age when I used to discuss our school's computer room, she used to be so excited to know about my school stories as her school did not have any computer room,” De said. “She said her school only had a few non-working computers/monitors that no one could use. I did not know what an Education Equity Gap was then. But I know now and am happy to eliminate this issue now in the US through our Pi Kids STEM volunteering program.”

Racheal is now in medical school, but De worried other students may not be so lucky.

“Here I am again asking the same question!” he wrote on the Pi Kids website. “How about most of the country? Hard work pays off for some students, but not for others. Doesn’t every student deserve the same quality of public school education? It shouldn’t be based on where they were born!”

Inspired to address educational inequity gaps that left some schools with comprehensive computer science education and others with none, De and other student volunteers hosted a number of workshops, and at schools and libraries in both California and New York. The group gets its name from the Raspberry Pi classes it runs, which teach young students how to build miniature computers.

“Not only did we get to play games, but we also coded on the Raspberry Pi,” one workshop participant wrote in a class review. “This is very interesting and cool because the games were fun and the coding was very interesting. This is an awesome class and the instructors are super friendly and helpful.”

De has already raised thousands of dollars, and hopes to raise more to sponsor more for a number of future initiatives, including:

• Donating Raspberry Pi computers to schools
• Host future workshops and hackathons in communities that need them
• A projector for an afterschool program at the Boys and Girls Club in Oakland
• Launching more programs in rural areas
• Applying for grants

For more information on the program and to get involved, visit theeducationalequity.com.