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Shikshagraha, the people-powered movement working to strengthen one million public schools across India, today announced Teach For India as its newest momentum partner. The partnership brings Teach For India's 17 years of experience developing teachers, young leaders and Alumni into a movement that has already mobilised more than 3.9 lakh leaders across 2.1 lakh public schools, triggering over 15.6 lakh micro-improvements — nearly 45,000 of them community-led.
The partnership brings together two complementary approaches: Teach For India's experience building individual leadership from the classroom outward, and Shikshagraha's network of more than 40 civil society organisations working across 16 states to drive collective action with government, communities and schools.
As Khushboo Awasthi, Chief Curator, Shikshagraha, puts it:
"Real change begins when someone decides to stop watching and start acting. For 17 years, Teach For India's Fellows and Alumni have made that choice — in classrooms, communities and far beyond them. Shikshagraha is built on the same belief: that transforming public education is not the work of a few organisations, but the work of millions of people choosing to act, learn and improve together. We are delighted to welcome Teach For India into the Shikshagraha network. Together, we hope to connect and amplify the agency of teachers, parents, young leaders, communities and institutions, so that every child can experience a school where they are seen, supported and given the opportunity to flourish & be future-ready."
Since 2009, Teach For India's Fellowship and Alumni network has built leaders inside classrooms and communities, with a tested model for tracking how one person's leadership grows — from a classroom, to a school, to a network, to an organisation. That gives Shikshagraha a working model for leadership pathways it can now offer its 3.9 lakh+ leaders.
For Shaheen Mistri, CEO, Teach For India, the decision to back Shikshagraha's goal came down to one thing:
"For 17 years, our Fellows and Alumni have shown us the power of the collective, and that the person in the room closest to a child's education is also the person most capable of transforming it. Shikshagraha's vision of a movement of a million schools, led not by any one organisation but by millions of people choosing to act, is exactly the kind of shared vision that will shift the needle in education. This collective values the depth it takes to nurture leadership, and the vast network it takes to connect that leadership to a national movement. Working together means Teach For
India Fellows and Alumni get a bigger canvas for the change they're already making, and every child gets more adults, in more places, working together to unleash their greatest potential."
What this partnership looks like in practice Over the coming year, this takes shape in three areas:
● Fellowship and leadership design — Shikshagraha's Fellowship and leadership programs will draw on Teach For India's experience in curriculum, coaching and assessment.
● Fellows and Alumni network — Teach For India's community of Fellows and Alumni joins the movement, with roles to lead and contribute across geographies.
● Shared narrative — Stories and proof points from Teach For India's classrooms feed into the movement's national narrative on leadership, student voice and agency —
alongside Shikshagraha's micro-improvement pilots and solutions repository.
The ambition: connect more people already working to improve public schools, give them stronger pathways to leadership, and help their collective action go further — towards a future where every child has the opportunity to learn well and flourish.
About Shikshagraha
Shikshagraha is a people's movement working to strengthen one million public schools across India, so every child can learn well and be ready for the future. Anchored by Mantra4Change and ShikshaLokam, and supported by the Shibulal Family Philanthropic Initiatives. Visit shikshagraha.org for more details.
