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26th November, 2025. Hrishi from Azim Premji Foundation came to Jagdalpur from Bangalore while Sunil ji (State Head, Foundation) and Indu ji joined us from Raipur. The purpose of the visit was to finalise some core details of the programme: Venue, Structure, Budget, and more.

30 hours

Around 9.30 AM, I left my house to pick up Hrishi from Devansh, the hotel he was staying. He had arrived early morning on a train from Vizag and was already done with his routine morning jog. We had a nice south indian breakfast together and headed to our (BWH) office.

Sunil ji was on the way, and Indu ji was already at Chetna’s Jagdalpur office, where we planned to have our first planning session. After some general chit chat, Hrishi, Rahul (my colleague), and I left for Chetna’s office. Sunil ji arrived at the same time.

Hrishi’s flight was at 4PM next day, so we had about 30 hours in our hands.

The Agenda

Hrishi started by setting the context and noting down points to be discussed on the black board:

It turned out to be a long list. I will just brief on a few important ones here. Thanks to Rahul for taking elaborate notes.

Postitioning

How is this programme different from other vocational computer training programs? BCA? Generic computer trainings?

The answer is Rigour.

Most training programmes are very basic and do not convert to actually employable software developers (even engineering degrees 🙈).

Even though such crash courses promise placements. Mostly the attendees are ready for a job as a data entry operator or similar.

The goal with CS17 is to have a high-end training course on Computer Science foundations and programming. As I have mentioned already in blog entry 03, the curriculum will be based on the famous CS50 by Harvard. The programme is also going to be trainer-led on contrary to peer-based self-learning cohorts that Navgurukul offers. The students also get to learn and experience the world of FOSS. BWH Studios will also help them get hands-on experience with real-world projects.

Entrance Test

A good point came up during the discussion on mobilisation of candidates. If we want the best chance of success of the pilot, we need to start with students with decent logical reasoning skills and some basic English. It was decided that we would reach out to local schools like Navoday Vidhyalay, Aatmanand, Chu Lo Aasman (Dantewada), and Mata Rukmani Aashram with a pitch deck. An entrace test would be developed and conducted for interested students to test their logical reasoning skills and basic mathematics (we don’t need to test their Calculus).

Misc.

Then there were some short discussions like bringing Mathematics to Q1, having a small library of english books, assessment, and even blocking Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat in the residential network.

The Venue

It was about lunch time and we decided to visit the 3 potential Venues that Indu ji’s team had identified after that. The first one turned out to be very remote. The second was my father’s property about 5KM from the city, where we used to live about 3 years ago. The third one’s care-taker was out of city and hence we were not able to go in, but we had a video recording of the same to make a decision. We headed back to BWH office for further discussion.

Budget Review

We continued where we left off. The elephant in the room was the excel sheet submitted by Chetna as the budget proposal a few weeks ago. I can’t disclose much of it right now but towards the end it ended up going higher 😂

Hrishi even proposed to have a small monthly “stipend” of sorts for the girls. Which makes complete sense to me.

Importance of Clean Toilets

Sunil ji brought up a very good point on the importance of hygine and cleanliness of washrooms. He told us how at their office, washrooms must be the cleanest of all rooms.

The reason being women refrain from even drinking water for long hours just so they don’t have to use those toilets. They also have a high risk of infections due to this unclean toilets. Hire two cleaning staff if needed, but washrooms must be always cleanly maintained.

The Plot Twist

We again circled back to the venue decision. During our rides to the prospective venues, I had mentioned about “Deen Bandhu Samaj”, the runners behind some of the best schools in Jagdalpur: Nirmal Vidyalaya, Vidya Jyoti, etc. They even run a hospital: MPM (which we visited the next day).

Hrishi messaged one of his colleages which he guessed was connected to the same place in Kerala to which the “Deen Bandhu Samaj” reports to. Luckily, his colleage’s Uncle, Fr. Kurian turned out to be one of the key persons behind these initiatives. Fr. Kurian mentioned they have a good campus where they are already running some training programmes.

He invited us to The Bishop’s house behind Nirmal Vidyalaya (my alma mater) and connected us to Fr. Sibi, in-charge of “Bastar Sevak Mandal” (BSM), a development initiative by the larger group.

He took us to the BSM campus (this was also the nearest of all prospective venues btw) and showed us the place.

We disturbed his evening Badminton game though…

It was almost ready to move in: accomodation, classes, furniture, dining hall, and more. We scheduled a meeting for early morning next day to discuss on how BSM can collaborate and were headed back to the city.

The Return

After the meeting next morning, Fr. Sibi promised to get back in a few days. Indu ji left for Raipur while Hrishi, Sunil ji and I headed to the same place for breakfast (we could not have it before the meeting since I was a bit late). After some chai pe charcha and MPM hospital visit, Sunil ji and Hrishi left for Chitrakote Waterfalls, an iconic tourist spot about 30 mins from the Jagdalpur city. Sunil ji left for Raipur from there and Hrishi got a bus back. He joined us back at our office where we worked on our own for a while before leaving for a team lunch with Hrishi!

After lunch, it was time to say goodbye (for now) and we dropped him to the Airport.

Next Steps

The proposal from Fr. Sibi has arrived. The next steps would be to take a decision on the proposal, prepare a pitch deck for the programme, and design an entrance test.