While studying for my bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering in Malaysia (circa 2012-2013), I had designed numerous original engineering outreach programmes to benefit my peers as well as underprivileged secondary school students.
In Malaysia, typically only students from schools in large cities have exposure to robotics. Schools in rural areas are usually left out of such exposure due to the limited annual budget those schools receive from the government and from donors. I felt a strong need for these schools not to be left out. I was determined to make the robotics outreach programmes work through a combination of leveraging on technology companies present in the state of Penang (which is also the Silicon Fen of Malaysia) and using recycled and DIY materials to lower the costs. I had designed the programmes to be easily executed by members of my societies, even without my presence and monitoring.
These outreach materials were not lifted from the internet because:
- circa 2012-2013, the whole Arduino, Raspberry Pi phenomena was still in its infancy, hence, there were limited readily available materials at the time;
- there was a gap in knowledge and exposure for students in rural schools, hence, there was a need to tailor the design of the materials to fit their level of exposure and understanding.
Many of these community-based engineering outreach activities were conducted as activities by my IEEE Student Branch team. We received recognition from the main IEEE Malaysia Section, which led to an unprecedented win for Best IEEE Student Branch in Malaysia in 2013. Our IEEE Student Branch was justifiably the underdogs in 2013 since we had a much lower member count compared to the defending champions. We were told during the awards ceremony that our combination of high impact/member ratio and community-centric activities was a key contributor in being given the award.
