ToW- Tinker on Wheels

Young Tinker Foundation

ToW- Tinker on Wheels

Transforming every Indian school's outdoors into an AI-STEM Lab

Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

India

Nonprofit

Problem Statement: Millions of students in rural and tribal communities lack access to quality hands-on STEM education due to poor infrastructure, outdated teaching methods, and language barriers. Government schools often lack STEM labs, trained educators, and interactive learning opportunities, leaving students unprepared for future careers. This gap creates two major challenges: 1. Job Readiness – 83% of unemployed Indians are youth, despite 65% having secondary or higher education, highlighting a severe education-employment mismatch. 2. Job Creation – India must generate 90+ million new jobs by 2030, many in emerging tech-driven fields. Scale of the Problem: - 150 million students in Indian schools lack access to STEM education. - 617 million children worldwide fail basic math and science proficiency (World Bank). Contributing Factors 1. No STEM Labs – 90% of Indian schools lack STEM infrastructure, trained teachers, and local-language curriculum. 2. Existing Mobile Labs – Costly, bus-based labs are unsuitable for rural roads and cannot accommodate large classes. Growing up in an island village with no quality education, my family had to migrate for better opportunities. While I was fortunate to study STEM and pursue a technology degree, many were left behind. This drives my mission to bring hands-on learning to the unreached.

ToW transforms any school’s outdoor space into a fully equipped, AI-powered STEM lab, making hands-on learning accessible anywhere without the need for permanent infrastructure. How It Works? Unlike traditional mobile labs built on buses, ToW is a compact unit mounted on a small three-wheeler or four-wheeler LCV, allowing it to navigate rural roads, city slums, and remote schools with ease. TOW operates on a rotational model, where our trained-mentors with ToW visits one school per day for five weeks, allowing it to serve five schools in a single cycle. The setup is unique—the lab literally "out-of-the-Box", with all equipment brought outside under a tent, enabling 60 students to learn simultaneously. The lab is equipped with: 1. Laptops for digital literacy 2. Microcontrollers for hardware coding 3. 3D printers for rapid-prototyping 4. Basic hand tools for mechanical, electrical, and farming projects 5. AI & IoT devices 6. Sustainable energy resources The curriculum is divided into five hands-on-workshops focused on: 1. Problem-solving 2. Rapid prototyping 3. Entrepreneurship and livelihood skills 4. STEM concepts 5. Robotics and space-technology Each session is completely hands-on, with followed by baseline and endline assessment tracks both qualitative impact (creativity, confidence, leadership) and quantitative metrics (girl participation, leadership rates, etc.). Demo: https://youtu.be/pchzh-ZNci0

ToW serves middle and high school students in rural, tribal, and under-resourced schools who lack access to hands-on STEM education. These students face barriers like poor infrastructure, outdated rote learning, and a lack of trained educators and local-language curriculum. Many have never seen a STEM lab or makerspace, making technology feel distant and inaccessible. Coming from an island village myself, I understand this firsthand—many students have never experienced how technology can solve real-world problems. Take Rishikesh Amit Nayak, a student from a village in Jagatsinghpur, Odisha. After witnessing farmer suicides due to pest attacks, he applied problem-solving frameworks learned in our program and developed a $1 AI-based solution to predict pest infestations 10 days in advance using satellite imagery and tech traces. His project was later funded by Intel. Through ToW, Young Tinker Foundation is empowering students to think differently, identify local challenges, and develop technology-driven solutions that make a tangible impact on their communities.