Our Story
I’d heard this story a million times. My mother said in Hindi, “I would study early in the morning, when the sun hadn’t risen, in the candlelit closet. My parents had barely saved up enough money to buy me these books, but they had faith that I would be able to achieve my dream of making it in STEM. I worked very hard to get here, and you should too.” This time, however, it sounded different. Because this time, I knew more about the world around me and the impact that education can have.
Inspired by this very story, I reached out to my aunt, who taught in an underprivileged community, to ask if any of her students would be interested in learning to code. I knew that knowing a programming language before entering job interviews was extremely valuable, especially in India. She asked around, and before we knew it, over 40 students were interested in joining the classes. While I teach them coding, my students are the ones who use what they learn to open up more opportunities for themselves.
My name is Anoushka Popuri, and I am a senior in high school. I began The Coding Door as a simple way to exercise my passion for programming while impacting a community I deeply cared about. I had seen the impact of coding, whether it was attending my Data Science and Visualization class at Harvard, learning machine learning through courses on Coursera, attending the Mark Cuban ML/AI Bootcamp, or starting a club of my own. I knew the impact that a few lines of code could have, and I wanted my students to be just as excited about coding as I am.
This journey has been truly incredible. I am very grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with and impact a community that has been a foundation for my future.