Background

At its core, 7 STEM Labs is a social initiative which believes that STEM education should not depend on the kind of school that a child gets to attend. While talent and interest exist everywhere, the opportunities to engage with robotics, engineering and scientific learning remains very unequally distributed, especially when it comes to government-funded and underserved schools. This initiative sought to bridge this gap by establishing STEM laboratories across Dharavi, Pune, and Punjab and create spaces where students can develop their technical skills and gain proper exposure to different STEM opportunities. 

As a part of this project, we established advanced STEM laboratories in underserved public and private schools and also supported students through their learning process. Beyond providing them with scientific equipment and other technical resources, the project also focused on building some long term learning ecosystems by training students, connecting the schools with external mentors and encouraging students to participate in reputed robotics competitions like the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). These experiences will help students build their problem-solving skills alongside gaining foundational concepts in STEM and using the same to build real-life models—eventually helping them to target prospective career pathways across the varied fields of STEM. 

For a sustainable and long-outreach, the project also collaborated with educators, policymakers, and industry professionals in order to expand the access to STEM education across the underprivileged communities of Dharavi, Pune, and Punjab. We truly aim to make advanced STEM learning more accessible so that students can feel inspired to see themselves as future innovators, engineers, and changemakers.