Story of Devi : A girl from rural Andhra Pradesh
Listen to experiences of Devi, attendee of Summer Camp 2016 at CBIT-Hyderabad
I'm Devi Priyanka Vakada from Vakadavari palem, a village near Amalapuram.
I don't know anything about Swecha initially when I registered to attend the camp. It was just a choice to me among several other choices likewise going to an internship or coaching centers then. I never knew that organisations of these kind even exist. But luckily I chose Swecha-FSMI's '15 Day Project-oriented Training Camp' held at CBIT college-Hyderabad, where I met people from different geographical locations, different mindsets and most of them are much ahead of us in terms of technical skills.
As we are from rural background, we don't have much practical exposure to what we've studied theoretically in our academics. So every year me and my friends tried to come out of our well to educate from this vast ocean of knowledge.
But we've so many barriers and one of them is money. To be an intern in core company or to learn some new technology, before every other barrier else money comes first, but it is not the case with Swecha. It is a full package of knowledge, new experiences, enjoyment and memories to me. All the time we were thinking how to make most of the day for all those 15 days. Dividing us into teams, making us to accomplish the tasks as a team, taught us how to cope up with people of different mindsets, technical skill sets and we could realise the importance of teamwork while working our project.
Apart from all these, the most important thing that I like in Swecha is having group discussions on the problems that our society is facing today. Actually, my ambition is to become a civil servant and as a habit I discuss these things with my father and some of my friends. But now my thinking perspective about these things is really different after my journey with Swecha. Now I started digging things more deeper.
So, in my view Swecha is a turning point to my career. 'We learnt how to learn things. Everyone of us experienced joy while learning. It also taught us that technology should be in a way to find out solutions to the existing problems and it should be available to every individual. There we came across to know about #FreeSoftware and #OpenHardware, which we came to know for the first time.
All I can say that during these 15 days, I learnt more things from technical and impact sessions by several guests, peer-to-peer learning from our co-participants and volunteers that I didn't even learn during 3 years of my b.tech life. I really feel lucky to attend this camp and to be a part of Swecha.
I must say this SWECHA the name itself refers freedom to think....freedom to express....and freedom to do...