Shaheen Mistri Says Teach For India

My life has been about trying to do whatever I can to catalyse all of us together to work for all children. I’m incredibly humbled to be amidst people who have already done so much work for society and have the capacity to do so much more. I wake up each morning and ask myself how can I do something more towards the children.” Meet Shaheen Mistri, empathetic educationist and CEO of the famous Teach For India program, who has earned global recognition for her dedication and commitment towards the fight for educational equality. Her entry into social upliftment for children started at a young age.

Having grown up in thirteen countries, she enrolling in the University of Mumbai, and was appalled to see the inequalities of the Indian education system. She founded the Akanksha Center in 1989, which evolved into the Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit that provides free after-school tutoring and valueservices to children upto the age of 18, readying them for the job market. Over the past 25 years, the Foundation has served 4,500 children in 51 centers and 16 schools across Mumbai and Pune. With the vision that every child must be educated to fully realize their potential, Shaheen launched the ‘Teach For India Movement’ along with five colleagues in 2008, recruiting almost 1700 teaching Fellows till date for its two-year teaching Fellowship.

Holding a Master’s Degree in Education from the University of Manchester (England), Shaheen Mistri is an Ashoka Fellow (2001), a Global Leader for Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum (2002), and an Asia Society 21 Leader (2006). She serves on the Boards of Ummeed, The Thermax Social Initiatives Foundation, The Akanksha Foundation, The Indian School Leaders Institute, and is an advisor to the Latika Roy Foundation.

“Let me tell you why I do what I do through the illustration of 2 children. One of them is Priyanka – we found her about two years ago, when she was 14 year old. She had a sad story growing through a childhood ridden with tremendous instabilities. She has shown tremendous maturity and the spirit of giving inspite of not having much herself. It’s been a magical journey, which we call Maya, and working very closely with teachers and students, I’d say that through this journey we want to learn to understand and live the three values – Courage, Compassion and Wisdom. If we can foster the experiences for our children when they are young to be that kind of a giving human being, how can the world not be fundamentally different? Today, with our support, Priyanka is studying abroad and is off to make a great headstart in life.

” Chit-chat over Table ‘Kit-Kat’! (courtesy Poonawala) February 02 to February 08, 2016 The Bulletin of the Rotary Club of Bombay Page 5 “This brings me to the second child – a young lad I chanced upon when I was driving outside the Mount Mary Church in Bandra. This young boy came up to me to sell candles and started haggling the price with me when I refused to buy candles from him. I asked him if he was in school and he wasn’t. And it’s at that point I realized that the only difference between this child and Priyanka, or the kids who don’t make it and the kids who do, was the difference of opportunity. This difference lies in our hands to give them the opportunity to make it in life. And not just small, incremental opportunities, but the kind of opportunities – the breadth and depth of opportunities that it took for each one of us to be sitting in this room today. How do we give that to all children? So that’s why I do what I do.

” She continued, “One number keeps me up at night… that number is ‘90%’. That’s the number of children in India still who have not graduated from school and entered college. When I think about that, knowing that even a college education today doesn’t guarantee success or livelihood, that presents to me one of our biggest challenges, but also one of our biggest opportunities. Imagine what India would look like if we were able to reverse that! Imagine how much kinder, safer and stronger India would be if every single child were able to truly maximize their potential.”

“At Teach For India, we try to bring in the participation of leaders from all walks of life and their commitment to solving this problem. If there aren’t enough people of influence today who are committed to this particular issue of educational equity, then let’s create them. So we run a Fellowship program where we today have 1,100 Teach for India ‘Fellows’, most of who have left the corporate sector and others are people from top colleges. Together we run a nationwide campaign asking people to join us for two years to teach, and this benefits you more because what you get from the experience of teaching full time from a challenging environment, will change your life.”

“I would like to tell you what I’ve truly come to understand over the past 25 years, with regard to what it’s really going to take to redraw our country for our children. I started out thinking I could change the world and then narrowed it down to wanting to change the country, and then the city and then just my home, but realized that the only change I can bring about was in myself. I can really do it in very little ways. The power of being able to do little things for all the people around me, provide them the opportunity – that has been my biggest learning.” Shaheen ended her inspiring talk with an appeal to us all.

“I would like to end this talk by giving you all the opportunity to engage with us. We would love for you to partner with us in any way. One of the areas we need help with is awareness-building – we are trying to build a nationwide movement, so we invite all who are interested in joining the Fellowship for Teach for India. We look forward to your engagement with us on all levels – corporate or individual for mentoring, etc. So do reach out!”