Story of a 12-year-old outshining academically with the help of coding

Born into a family with limited financial resources, Surojit faced challenges that could have easily deterred him from pursuing his academic aspirations and dreams. His father, Totan Adhikari is as a factory worker in a gloves’ manufacturing unit, and his mother, Jhuma Adhikari works as a domestic helper. Even though they earn a very modest monthly income of 11,000 rupees, Surojit’s parents have an unwavering belief in his potential, and enrolled him in Literacy India’s coding Karigari IT classes to help him enhance his skills.  

Surojit’s love for storytelling and vivid imagination found an outlet in coding. Through hours of practice on code.org with our educator, he quickly rose to become the fastest learner in his class. No longer did he struggle with the closing of brackets or the logic of programming puzzles. In fact, he could solve them with ease and efficiency. Remembering his own struggles, he willingly shared his knowledge and assisted his peers in overcoming their coding challenges. As he helped others, his own understanding deepened, and his confidence augmented.  

At the end of the training, all the program students were given time to either extend a project they started building into a “Choose Your Own Adventure”, “Greeting Card”, or “Personality Quiz”. They could also continue on to build more projects featured on the code.org/applab page. Surojit’s project is available here.  He envisions a future where he could create captivating games and innovative applications, utilizing his coding skills to craft interactive worlds.