Young professionals pitch in to teach underprivileged children

Sourabh Taneja is irked when one quizzes him as to why despite being an IIT graduate and having a lucrative job with a multinational, he agreed to teach the underprivileged children in the little known Supari Tank school in suburban Bandra in Mumbai.

"I am tired of answering this question again and again. I have been asked the same thing since I joined 'Teach for India' as a Fellow, three months ago," Taneja, who passed from the prestigious IIT Delhi, told PTI in Mumbai.

"We always talk about changing the society but to do so we have to enter it and clean it. This is my way of giving back to the society," he says.

He is not alone in this endeavor. Taneja is among the 87 fellows, who have passed out from educational institutions like New York University, St. Xaviers (Mumbai), Georgetown University (USA) and the University of Warwick (UK) and quit or taken a sabbatical from companies like Citibank, Accenture ICICI, Hewlett Packard, and resisted parental pressure to join Teach for India.

"'Teach for India' is a movement that aims to narrow the educational gap in India by placing the country's most outstanding college graduates and young professional, all of academic majors and careers, in low income schools for two years," Teach for India CEO Shaheen Mistry said.

In June 2009, Teach for India placed 87 Fellows in English medium primary schools in Mumbai and Pune to teach over 3,000 students, she said.