Why we exist?

The Mission

Our mission is to empower a collective movement of leaders from our classrooms, communities, and our Alumni network. We are dedicated to creating a future where learners across South Africa access quality education, comprehensive support, and boundless opportunities, enabling them to shape a brighter future for themselves and our Nation of South Africa.

Teach the Nation build deep relationships with communities committed to making long-term progress for South Africa Learners. We recruit Our nations’ diverse, promising leaders to commit at least two years to teach in marginalized communities, and support and develop them to work together with families and community members towards a shared vision for learners’ success. With this foundation, as alumni these leaders continue to work with other educators, allies, and communities to improve the quality of education for SA learners and effect the systemic changes needed to enable our nation’s children to thrive.

Through our global network of 62 countries, local partners, staff members, teachers, alumni, and schools allies, we share solutions to accelerate each other’s progress and increase our collective impact. These collective, sustained efforts are contributing to progress in communities across the nation that are working to champion our learners with the education, support, and opportunity to fulfil their potential.

"I am very proud of our partnership with Teach The Nation, as it strongly aligns with IG's ambition of empowering young people through education."

"The role as a Teach the Nation fellow goes beyond imparting knowledge; you are a guide, a mentor, a role model, an encourager, and a source of inspiration."

"TTN will be an invaluable partner in the recruitment and professional development of teachers."

"You may not see the fruits of today’s work, but you have planted a lifetime of knowledge."

Statistically, as per our reference, 51% of learners who start grade 1 make it to matric and only 17% of those who pass matric receive bachelor’s passes.

At Teach the Nation, our core challenge resides in the Systemic repercussions of apartheid, entwining poverty, and education inequity, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1, 4, and 8. Shaped and Influenced by our history, education disparities persist, constraining disadvantaged communities’ access to quality education, and perpetuating cycles of poverty.

Compounded by the psychological trauma from South Africa’s history, our learners face limitations in resource access and exposure to bigger dream aspirations, still influenced by South Africa’s legacy of Apartheid. The educational divide between affluent and marginalised families, coupled with inadequate teacher support, overcrowded classrooms, and a scarcity of entrepreneurial mindsets and access to resources, widens this gap. Limited entrepreneurial aptitude among our education system hinders innovation, economic growth, and upward mobility.

Resolving these challenges demands fostering an entrepreneurial ethos within education, nurturing creative problem-solving and an entrepreneurial spirit among our learners (who are our main catalysers of sustainable systemic change), through recruiting and empowering the best leaders and through continuous exposure of our learners to these leaders in our underprivileged schools. Teach the Nation empowers a movement of leaders across South Africa through education to bridge educational inequity, instil entrepreneurial mindsets, and advance the SDGs while systemically shifting the societal impacts of entrenched poverty.

At Teach the Nation, we address education inequity by empowering a movement of collective leadership.

At Teach the Nation, we’re on a mission to build a group of leaders that can make a real difference in our communities. We’re doing this by recruiting promising young leaders who are currently teaching in schools, and recruiting graduates from universities across South Africa and placing them in under-resourced schools and empowering them as teachers and leaders who can inspire our learners to be creative, entrepreneurial and who develops learners as leaders.

We aim to build a transformative movement of leaders within our communities. Our mission is rooted in eradicating poverty, equalising educational access, and fostering economic growth. Through education leadership, social entrepreneurship and social innovation, our model seeks to redefine the trajectory of learners, championing them into leaders of change who are deeply rooted with purpose, leadership, and social entrepreneurship.

Changing the systemic narratives of inequity for our learners rooted from historical unequal system from Apartheid Era requires changes in policy, practice, and culture- which means it requires people exercising leadership at every level of education and government, from inside and outside of the system. Meaningful, sustainable change also takes a movement of leaders working together across lines of difference and levels of power and led by those who have experienced the inequities being addressed. We call this collective leadership.

Additionally, we aim to foster partnerships that empower both society and the economy. Through our collective efforts we address the wide gaps in education, nurturing a cohort of national and global leaders. Through our movement we visualise a future in South Africa with reduced poverty, improved access to quality education, and leadership qualities in our learners, who are the powerful leaders of change in our communities and drivers of sustainable futures for all.

The Mission

At Teach the Nation, we address education inequity by empowering a movement of collective leadership.

Thank you for leading our learners to possibilities they wouldn't have explored alone – Teach The Nation