At Teach For India, we believe leadership for education is the solution. We are building a movement of leaders who will eliminate educational inequity in India.
In 2006, 17 years after starting the Akanksha Foundation, Shaheen felt compelled to address the issue of educational inequity at scale. As she thought through the solution, she believed that the answer lay in a people’s movement that needed to come together to provide every child in India with an excellent education.
In 2007, Shaheen met with Wendy Kopp, the Founder of Teach For America and was struck by the idea of leadership being at the core of the solution. In 2009, Teach For India welcomed our first cohort, the Class of 2009, to the Fellowship. The 87 “Niners” formed the beginning of what Shaheen hoped would become a nationwide movement of diverse leaders. Two years later, our Niners graduated from the Fellowship and became the first cohort in our Alumni movement. Through their work as Alumni, the hope was that they would become lifelong leaders for equity. Our first cohort of Alumni went into teaching, teacher training, school leadership, and government policy. Today, we have 900 Fellows working relentlessly to change the lives of students in their classrooms and become leaders for change themselves. And we have 3400 Alumni who are collectively fuelling the larger movement towards our vision.
Teach For India is a part of the Teach For All Network, a growing group of independent organizations that are working to expand educational opportunities in their nations. Teach For All is a platform for shared learning and deep engagement across countries. The 59 countries in the network today share a common vision that one day all children will attain an excellent education.