The Young Tinker Academy & Foundation

Anil founded the Young Tinker Academy and Foundation in 2015, to address the lack of access to quality education and opportunities in rural India. The Young Tinker Academy and Foundation is democratising access to STEM education through its Intent, Content and Environment pedagogical method for 21st century skills development and hands-on learning. Anil is a recipient of the Indian government’s National Youth Award for his achievements in education accessibility.

Anil attended the One Young World Summit in Manchester, 2022. He connected with fellow Ambassadors working on education projects across the world and has taken inspiration from their work, incorporating their approaches and ideas into his own. Additionally, he has used the One Young World Community as a network to connect with corporates for possible collaborations through corporate social responsibility programmes.

The Young Tinker Academy has provided education to 247,000 young people between grades 6-12. Young Tinker Spaces offer a collaborative workplace, mostly in schools, for the students to work on their projects through hands-on learning. Students of the Young Tinker Space Programme also must plant a tree to graduate. Additionally, students get to participate in the annual Young TinkerFest, a science festival where they can showcase their innovations. Through the Rural Innovation Programme, students from other countries volunteer to support the implementation of ongoing Young Tinker Foundation projects. Students from the Young Tinker Academy have participated in NASA’s Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC) 2021 and 2023 editions, where they won World Rank 3 and the Social Media Award respectively.

“The experience that we get at One Young World is totally different, meeting all these leaders in one place. Once you have the entire world in one place, you get energised, inspired and you also gain leadership skills. Leadership skills are not about going to a classroom and learning, they’re about watching people and learning from them. So I gained those leadership skills and it impacted our own organisation in a big way.”