‘Teach for Change’ comes to Chennai

Chennai: After a roaring success in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, 'Teach for Change' (TFC) on Saturday made its way to Chennai. Tamil Nadu Governor K. Rosaiah kickstarted the project.

Under the first phase, volunteers of 'Teach for Change' will teach English and leadership skills to students of 10 Chennai Corporation schools.  Lauding the initiative, the Governor said that TFC would help improve the overall capacity of students from weaker sections of society and hoped that volunteers would not only educate the students but also help them develop confidence.

Other dignitaries at the event were popular actors Lakshmi Manchu, who is also TFC's goodwill ambassador, and Suhasini Maniratnam. Recalling her own experiences of studying in a municipality school, Suhasini said, "throughout school I studied in Tamil medium schools but it was only when I got to college that I realised that not learning English was a great disadvantage as I didn't understand even the simplest of sentences. The same problem continues with government school students now, even if they ace other subjects, not learning English brings down their potential," she said.

Started a year ago, the project trains homemakers, students and working professionals to donate two hours of their time every week to teach English and leadership skills at government schools. Founded by 24-year-old Chaitanya initially in just 10 schools in Hyderabad, the initiative quickly gained popularity and Chaitanya credits this speedy success to Deccan Chronicle who are also partners of the initiative.

Now in over 100 schools in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, the founder is venturing into Chennai. After selecting and screening volunteers, TFC conducts a two weekend training program for teachers after which they can start teaching at their nearest allocated corporation school.

Chaitanya proves there can be no age for change

Barely looking his age of 24, one would find it hard to believe that Chaitanya MRSK has devoted more than half of his life to teaching. At 15, Chaitanya started to teach at government schools and won the much-acclaimed UN Youth Excellency award the following year. It was only after he won the award that Chaitanya decided to start Passionate Foundation to initiate change in government school education.

Chaitanya started Teach for Change initiative as a flagship project under the Passionate Foundation after realising that students lacked good English teachers. "The lack of English language skills and soft skills didn't allow students to be competitive and stopped them from fully realizing their potential," the young COO of the Foundation said.

When asked how in just a year, the initiative spread from ten schools to more than a 100, Chaitanya said the response to this initiative was phenomenal as a large number of  people wanted to volunteer.

"My inbox is always filled with applications and most of our applicants are DC readers as DC has helped us get wide coverage from the very beginning and now even though we are only just launching in Chennai I have already started receiving applications," he said. Chaitanya's next destination for TFC is Bengaluru after which the team hopes to move to Thiruvananthapuram, therefore covering all the four southern states.

However, the dream doesn't stop there for Chaitanya, "After South, our next move is the rest of India. We will try and reach every nook and corner of the country to help improve the
standard of education," he said.