DOHA: An inspirational graduate from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMUQ) is planning to develop ‘OpenCurriculum’, an online study resource that can be freely used by students and educators in the Mena region.
Varun Arora (pictured), is a Carnegie Mellon University information systems alumnus and the brains behind ‘OpenCurriculum’—an online platform that helps educators create, access and share learning materials for primary and secondary school-aged children.
He is the founding director of OpenCurriculum, where he heads up a team of five people who share this vision and passion for open source education. The team’s online teaching materials are already being used by 100 organisations and local education communities in Pittsburgh, South Africa and Nepal.
Varun, excited about the potential OpenCurriculum for the Mena region, said: “There is a common theme between countries in the Gulf region, primarily Qatar and across Asia. There is an emerging trend to engage the public in decision making for economic development, by giving them tools, open knowledge and forums to voice opinion and share feedback.
“Countries like Qatar are going through a massive renaissance in education, as open and innovative ideas and initiatives need warm environments to emerge and get incubated,” he added.
OpenCurriculum provides educational content, including thousands of open articles, videos, audio, worksheets and documents, all produced and curated by the community. The site is free to use, easy to navigate and is helping thousands of young students who might otherwise not be exposed to this caliber of teaching aids.
While OpenCurriculum launched less than two years ago, Varun’s work has already earned him several prestigious awards, among them an Anne and Edward Lewis Social Innovation Fellowship from Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College and an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Young Innovators Award. In 2011, Varun was named a winner of Google’s Zeitgeist Young Minds, a social entrepreneur competition that recognised ten pioneers.
A series of events Varun attended while studying at Carnegie Mellon have empowered him.
“Social entrepreneurship is the hardest form of entrepreneurship. Just by its nature, you need to be willing to do anything and everything to make it work. The most important aspect of being a social entrepreneur lies in the ‘social’ part. This requires a high degree of empathy and understanding of complex human challenges. Carnegie Mellon Qatar repeatedly emphasises the need to be close to the community and be cognizant of the needs of people,” he said.
For now, Varun has carved out his own career path and wants others to do the same by staying motivated and becoming a force for change.
“My advice to students would be to constantly and actively apply the skills you learn in school to the community. The university is brimming with opportunity. I spent my time there doing everything I could possibly cram in my schedule. I started three student organisations, played in the university’s sports teams and ran events. I could do all I wanted to do as I had resources and inspiration all around me,” he said.
The Peninsula
