Seeing it is the first rung.
A summer immersion that brings technology within reach for rural school students in Karnataka — the first rung for students who have never met a technologist.
Showing rural students what’s possible.
For a child who has never set foot on a college campus, the biggest barrier isn’t ability — it’s never having seen what’s on the other side. FAER’s Technology Barrier Reduction program brings rural school students into that world: onto college campuses, into labs and libraries, around mathematics, language, sport and the everyday life of higher education. It’s exposure that turns "people like me don’t do this" into "I could do this."
What a TBR student experiences.
A real campus
Time in the labs, libraries and hostels a college already has. Higher education up close, not in a brochure.
People who did it first
Students and faculty who came from where they came from.
Mathematics, language, sport
The everyday life of a campus — not a syllabus.
A week that changes the question
From "can someone like me?" to "which one?"
Where TBR leads.
TBR is Reach. Years later, at college, that is the student who applies to the Scholar Awards.
- 01Before
A student who has yet to stand on a campus.
Higher education is somewhere other people go.
- 02During
A week inside one.
The labs, the library, the hostel, and people who started where they started.
- 03After
The question has changed.
Not "could someone like me" but "which subject, which college".
- 04Years later
They apply to the Scholar Awards.
With a problem from their own district, and a guide at their own college.
Questions about TBR.
Rural school students in Karnataka — before the point at which most of them decide technology is not for people like them.
