SHAHEEN MISTRI - The Power of Excellent Education

By BWA Envoy
March 15, 2022
2 Minutes Read

Teach for India (TFI) Founder and CEO Shaheen Mistri spoke with BWA about her mission to bring equity in education across India, a journey she began at the age of just 18. Join the movement as a TFI fellow! Growing up in five different nations can drastically alter your perspective on life. This is what inspired Shaheen Mistri, the CEO of TFI (www.teachforindia.org), one of India's largest non-profit organizations, to create an education leadership community unlike any other.

Her first initiative, Akanksha Foundation, was born when she was only 18. It began with 15 youngsters and a group of St. Xavier's College volunteers who met up to teach children. It now has 23 schools educating nearly 10,000 low-income children, with a graduation rate of nearly 100%. Teach For India was created in 2009 to build a movement of leaders focused on addressing educational injustice. McKinsey & Company began a twelve-week study to see if this strategy could be implemented in India. When the findings were positive, a plan for the first cohort of Fellows was put in place, as well as a five-year strategy to scale up the model.

There are more than 1000 TFI Fellows currently, 32,000 students in TFI classrooms, and over 3400 alumni working at all levels of the educational system today. Talking about the effect of the pandemic, Mistry says that children from the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods have experienced a food crisis, homelessness, migration, domestic abuse, medical problems, and disrupted learning over the past few years.

TFI’s urgent crowdfunding campaign on Milapp, ‘Covid-19 Relief and Learning Fund for Teach For India’ helped fulfil their goal of serving poor families during the pandemic. Because of the digital divide in India, the team also created the 'Sponsor A Device' campaign to raise funding for 10,000 devices for online education. TFI is well on its way to transforming how we value teachers and celebrating how unique each student is!