Help 28,000 Indian Children Get Quality Education

We are living amidst a once-in-a-generation crisis that threatens the moral and social fabric of India and the world. The Covid-19 pandemic has directly infected more than 8 million people across the globe. In India, it has already impacted over 300 thousand citizens. We, at Teach For India, are committed to ensuring a better tomorrow. We serve, through the direct care of Teach For India, 32,000 children. Indirectly, our Alumni are serving more than 21 million others through classrooms, schools, community centers, non-profits, and advocacy arms. By design, we are collectively serving the country’s most impoverished and most vulnerable families.

For the children we serve, the four walls of the Teach For India classroom are their only pathway to a better life. It’s also their safe haven and space where many can find reprieve from the chaos and abuse of life at home. The current crisis deeply threatens that safe haven. It’s cutting off access to nutrition and basic supplies: our internal data suggested that in the initial weeks of the lockdown, 45% of our families were unable to reliably access finance and food. And with the closure of schools across the country, it’s taking one of society’s greatest equalizers - the promise of an excellent education - and threatening to render it moot. Our students are losing valuable learning time which, for India’s most impoverished children, is needed to succeed. Given their lack of network connectivity and literate family members, the school is their only access to effective instruction.

Our 900 Fellows have been coordinating relief efforts - drives to provide basic supplies such as food and ration - for the 32,000 families we serve. They’re setting up ration camps in schools across Malwani, Mumbai; mobilizing funds for survival kits in Hyderabad; volunteering via distribution camps in Pune. And in the background, they’re converting their classrooms to virtual spaces to ensure that learning doesn’t stop.Our 3400 Alumni – now working in institutions, non-profits, and schools across the country – are providing relief for millions more. Our children too are stepping up to serve their communities by providing access to necessities, keeping peers connected, and ensuring that learning continues.

To complement the efforts of our frontline leaders and provide food and relief to our students and their families, we launched an online relief campaign. So far we have raised a little over 75% of our goal and utilized half of the contribution to serve more than 10500 families across Amdavad, Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Pune. Assistance has included food rations, gas supplies, medicinal support, and direct-cash assistance. With the lockdown likely to get extended at least in part, and the economic toll likely to continue, we are anticipating that families will continue to need assistance. We are committing to continue providing assistance for families in need – via food, rations, medicine, and direct cash – to families in need over the next 60 days.That period will allow targeted families to transition back into society effectively. We are also gradually moving towards enabling enhanced access to our students for online learning by ensuring that they have the necessary resources to do so - a device and a strong internet connection.