Amazon Future Engineer programme completes a year; 4.5 lakh students learn computer science

NEW DELHI : Amazon’s computer science education programme, Amazon Future Engineer (AFE), has completed one year today in India. Over 4.5 lakh students from more than 3,000 government schools across 11 states have learnt computer science with the help of this programme. The programme teaches students of Classes 3 to 12 who come from low-income families and don’t have the resources to study computer science or the opportunities to learn about careers that exist in the technology industry.

In its first year, the CS programme also supported 200 girls from low-income families with scholarships to pursue computer science education. AFE provided 200 scholarships in 2021.

Amazon has opened registration for the AFE scholarship 2023. In its second year, the number of scholarships has been increased to 500 and the last date to submit the scholarship application is December 31, 2022. Girl students who have already gained admission into an engineering college through a central or state level entrance exam and have the total household annual income of Rs 3 lakh or less, are eligible to apply for the scholarship.

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AFE provides computer science explore activities such as ‘Hour-of-Code’ and ‘Amazon Cyber Robotics Challenge’ to introduce students to the basics of computer science in an interactive and fun way. The students are also offered deeper computer science learning opportunities like ‘Code-a-Thon’ - a project-based structured boot camp for learning hands on coding and advanced courses on robotics, computer aided design and web design. AFE is also creating digital computer science learning apps like ‘code-Mitra’ and ‘Meraki’ that enable students to learn computer science on mobile devices, often without internet, in their own languages.

AFE has also established around 70 AFE labs where children learn to code and also to build live projects using physical computing components like raspberry PIs and sensors. These labs combined with digital assets enable schools to provide a holistic learning experience to their students by experimenting with computers and technology. For AFE Scholars, Amazon provides each student a sum of Rs 1.6 lakh over four years along with mentorship from Amazonians and bootcamp style courses to build a successful tech career.

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Anita Kumar, Head - Amazon in the Community, CSR India and APAC said, “We provide computer science learning avenues which include interactive learning content based on real world application of Computer Science (CS) in local languages, curated curriculum for schools, courses for teachers in CS, additional recourse person to teach CS and bridge infrastructure gaps where possible. Through these initiatives, we believe that we will be able to inspire young people to build their best future through quality computer science education, while building a diverse and inclusive tech industry,” she added.

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