Help 28,000 Indian Children Get Quality Education

“We Have a Dream”: Phase III of Teach For India

One million children will receive an excellent education by 2022.

This is our vision for the next five years .

What started as an initiative with just 87 Fellows across 34 schools in 2 cities in 2009, has today, grown to a full fledged organisation with 1178 Fellows across 353 schools in 7 cities. And now that our journey of the past eight years is beckoning to us to take the next step, we find ourselves ready and eager to take the big leap into the abyss of progress that awaits us.

Lend us your ears, for we have a dream. Teach For India has a dream! 

Before we talk about the road that lies ahead of us, let us take a brisk walk down the path that has been traversed by TFI since its inception.

TEACH FOR INDIA: PHASES OF OUR GROWTH

In Phase 1 (2009-2013), we asked ourselves “how do we start strong?” As an organization, we wanted to learn and understand as much as we could – of our Fellows, our students and our communities. We wanted to create strong starting systems that would enable us to grow. Most importantly, we wanted to build a culture of passion and urgency, firmly embedded in our core values.

By 2013, we grew our Fellowship to 713 Fellows, placed in 5 cities directly serving over 23,000 students. We built a network of over 600 Alumni working across sector towards educational equity.

 In Phase 2 (2013-2017), we asked ourselves “how can we deepen and consolidate our impact?” Given the early successes and proof-points were created among students, Fellows and Alumni, we aspired to go deeper into how our classrooms can improve and endure, deeper into the impact that our Fellows and Alumni can have, and deeper into the excellence that our staff can exemplify.

In 2016, we’ve consolidated our impact across 1,178 Fellows in 7 cities, developed a student vision scale that demonstrates what an excellent education means to us and enabled over 39,500 student identify ways in which they can be empowered to lead.

 LOOKING AHEAD

Phase 3 (2017-2022) is our next step towards reaching our vision. It began us with us trying to answer the question, “how can we do as much as we can for as many children as we can?” We believe that we cannot achieve our vision alone, but need to involve collective action of various partners, supporters and stakeholders from our Fellows, Alumni, staff, and our students, to NGOs in the industry, individuals and corporations invested in education, and the government who will work together towards this ambitious goal.

In Phase 3, we are focusing on expanding geographically while continuing to deepen our impact in our existing classrooms and schools, and also start to reach students in semi-rural and rural settings, including those in non-English medium schools. By innovating and remaining nimble, we hope to ensure that one million children will access an excellent education by 2022.

Fueling the internal capacity to drive these strategic shifts, we have prioritized three key enablers to undergird our organizational health; Talent, Partnership, and Learning. We propose to create not only 6000 Fellow and Alumni leaders (by doubling the Fellowship) but also 10000 student leaders by 2022. In addition to this, through the growth model- TFIx, we aim to pilot a year-long incubation for passionate and experienced entrepreneurs who want to adapt Teach For India’s model to their context. Each entrepreneur will thus start his/her own Fellowship, with Teach for India’s expertise and support.

The ultimate challenge of our Phase 3 strategy is thus to redefine and demonstrate collective action towards an excellent education at scale. We are setting out to try and bestow upon a million bright and curious minds the education that they deserve. And in this new journey that we are embarking upon, we humbly hope to find you by our side, just as we always have.

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Khushboo is a Teach For India Fellow (2015-17) in Ahmedabad. She teaches in a low-income school in the midst of chawls where migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Rajasthan live and work as painters, factory workers, carpenters and other wage laborers. There are very tiny houses in chawls, where her students live on rent and they are very used to witnessing violence in their homes, seeing their fathers beating their mothers. They are also the witnesses of violence in their community where people who don’t get jobs get involved in inhuman activities like stealing, eve teasing, threatening, hurting and killing other people.

Khushboo talks about her experience - 

"I realized that there is a lack of leadership in the community. People feel hopeless and afraid to take any step towards a positive change in the community and people with whom I am in direct contact with are my tiny little hopes, my students. I signed up for MAYA - Ahmedabad, a Teach For India’s initiative for Student Leadership. During this process they learned about their strengths, weaknesses, values and purposes and how can they connect all of these aspects in their daily lives through reflecting upon their behavior. They learned deeply about their community through numerous community walks, surveys and understanding the bright spots as well as problems of their community that they can understand the problems and can play the role of catalysts of change. Now, students are practicing rigorously to showcase the problems of the community through Forum Theatre in front of around 300 people. They want to show that even a small change matters and children can do anything. Along with these students are trying different small things to change their community."

Shalini, who used to be very shy to speak in class a year ago, now tries to resolve the fights in her community by entering in between and cracking a joke loudly.

Ranjani, who used to be very fierce, now teaches English to two grade 7 students in her community as she recognized that her strengths are grit and helping.

Annu, who started teaching values, feelings and importance of reflection to her parents which has decreased domestic violence in her house to a level where parents are more focused on investing in their children rather than making small issues bigger and arguing upon them. She has empowered her mother with her words of wisdom, now her mother is hopeful about her daughter’s future despite her father’s short temper.

Similarly, every child has incredible stories that they share with Khushboo on a daily basis where they changed something in the community using their values- courage, compassion, and wisdom.