Moving tales of despair and hope from India’s classrooms

About a decade ago, Teach for India, an NGO that works with college graduates and working professionals offering fellowships to teach children in underserved schools, took off with just 87 fellows. Currently, it stands strong with 900 fellows working with 320 schools nationally — helping over 32,000 underprivileged students get access to quality education. The 10-year-long journey of the non-profit organisation has seen many challenges, as well as inspiring stories — including those of the poorest of children going ahead to pursue their dream careers, techies leaving their jobs to work on education for the impoverished communities, and a collective effort to address inequities in education system. 

Marking the 10-year milestone, Sandeep Rai, the chief of city operations for the NGO, who also worked with the Teach for India movement since its inception, turns into an author with his book, Grey Sunshine: Stories From Teach For India. The book brings to light the stories of some of India’s kids growing up in the most disadvantaged communities, and how education can play a critical role in turning their lives around. It gives faces to the country’s statistics on poverty and education by delving into the lives of people like Jai Mishra, who grew up in an impoverished village of Maharashtra, and fought many social battles to become a fellow at Teach for India — now working to uplift other underserved communities.

The organisation’s founder and chief executive Shaheen Mistri says the book marks a milestone, while also giving an impetus for the years to come. “Ten years is an interesting milestone as it was a decade of facing the sad truth of inequity in education and also hope through the fellows and kids. There is greyness in poverty, but also sunshine in the stories of these students. Our long goal is for the kids to understand the inequity in education, their purpose and have the skills to make the world better,” she asserts. 

Sandeep, who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi of the United States, began his tryst with education first with Teach For America programme, through which he taught at some of the most challenging schools in the US. “While conditions for minorities in America were undeniably severe, they would never compare to the hardships confronting the world’s most marginalised. Moving back to India...was a decision rooted in the same realisation that elicited my first career change,” the author notes in the book. 

“I assured my family that I would stay for no more than two years. I was going to help get Teach For India, a model inspired by its American equivalent off the ground,” he adds. But what forced him to remain in the country, even 10 years later, Sandeep says, were the facts that over 60 per cent of India’s 320 million children are destined to either never attend school or drop out before they even reach the 11th standard. And that only 25 per cent of the country’s population will ever step foot into a college. The tales of kids that Sandeep narrates takes a reader through many classrooms from nooks and corners of the country, while sprouting a ray of hope of challenging the inequalities in the society through education. “A bittersweet reality undercuts our current state of affairs: we know what it takes to deliver an excellent education. We see our most privileged students receiving one at some of our country’s most prestigious institutions. If we can do it for a few, then isn’t it our moral responsibility to do it for all?” he argues in the book.