Vineeta Garg

Vineeta first started teaching in computer institutes to fund her own higher education studies. However, the experience of sparking an interest for programming in students developed her passion for teaching, and she eventually joined a school as a Computer Science teacher. At that time, only a small number of students chose Computer Science as part of their final school studies, and although the wider student body all used computers for surfing the web, they were apprehensive about taking further steps such as learning programming languages.

Vineeta tackled this obstacle by designing e-content in the form of blogs, Android apps and videos so that students could learn anytime, anywhere and on the device of their choice. (These apps now have 10K+ downloads each, and her programming blog has 200K+ visits.) Vineeta also encouraged her students to be creative and use technology to try and solve the problems our world is facing today. To her surprise, students came up with wonderful ideas and made prototypes for projects such as protecting the Taj Mahal from acid rain and a wi-fi LED for ambulance and traffic signals. Two students were selected for the National Inspire Award in 2018; Vineeta’s average marks per student have risen to 93.5%, and last year all 50 of her students gained admission to good colleges, with 35 pursuing higher studies in Computer Science.

Many of the activities initiated by Vineeta are helping students become global citizens and creating educational equity. To spread the message of peace across the globe, in 2018 she started a global project, The Safe Spaces, which was joined by 153 schools from around 35 countries. She has also built a Peace Force of around 10,000 students who are working towards building a peaceful atmosphere in their schools. As well as conducting training sessions with more than 10,000 educators across the world, she has carried out 20+ training sessions for underprivileged and special needs students and 50+ Skype sessions on robotics with students across the world. At international level, Vineeta won the Global Cyber Challenge in 2017 and was praised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She also won at the AKS Global Teacher Awards in 2018, the Microsoft International Educator Exchange challenge in 2019, and the National Teacher Awards in 2019.

If Vineeta wins the Global Teacher Prize, she would fund programmes to raise digital awareness for people living in hard-to-reach villages, and design a bus fitted with computers, tools, robotics kits and Raspberry Pi boards to go to more remote places. STEM/robotics camps would visit multiple locations to plant the seed of STEM in younger people who may have little knowledge of it. In addition, Vineeta would like to use the funds to sponsor higher education for students who cannot continue due to lack of funds.