• 17 Nov, 2025

Introduction: The Girl Who Coded Under a Tree

In a village near Gaibandha, in the quiet shade of a banyan tree, 15-year-old Anjali sits cross-legged on a worn cotton mat. Her phone — a second-hand Android with a cracked screen — rests on her knees. The battery is at 12%. The network signal flickers between 1G and 3G.

She opens an app called Grasshopper.

She taps a block.
A green checkmark appears.
She smiles.

This is her classroom.

Her teacher? A free app.
Her textbook? A 10-minute YouTube tutorial.
Her peers? A WhatsApp group of 12 girls from three different villages.

Anjali doesn’t have a laptop.
She doesn’t have Wi-Fi.
She doesn’t have a coding academy in her district.

But she has something more powerful: curiosity.

And across Bangladesh — from the rice fields of Noakhali to the tea gardens of Sylhet — hundreds of girls like Anjali are doing the same.

They’re not waiting for permission.
They’re not waiting for infrastructure.
They’re not waiting for someone to build a school for them.

They’re building their own future — with a smartphone and a dream.

This isn’t science fiction.

This is real.

And it’s happening right now.