Teach For Pakistan Aspires to Teach the Underprivileged 

By Zahra Amin

 

Teach For Pakistan (TFP) is an organization for Pakistani students who have had limited educational opportunities. According to the TFT website “Our vision is for our children to grow into thinkers, scholars, artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs – builders of a new Pakistan.” It helps kids learn better in school and is led by the help of “Fellows,” or people who already have their undergraduate degrees and are eager to push other young students to achieve their academic potential as well. The organization held a well-attended fundraiser at a private residence in Elk Grove, California recently, which is one of the reasons for this report.

Teach For Pakistan was started by Khadija S. Bakhtiar, the CEO and founder of the organization. She moved from Pakistan to the United States and completed college here at UC Berkeley, one of the foremost universities in the US. While there, she reflected on the fact that not many people from Pakistan have the same opportunity, just because of where they live. Kids cannot even read or write in fifth grade at a second-grade level, Khadija stated, emphasizing the need for better education there. Teach For Pakistan is trying to change things for the better in education all over Pakistan, she added. 

When Khadija first had this idea, people were skeptical, because in Pakistan, teaching is often not known as a lucrative profession. Society thinks that it is for people who cannot get into anything else, which is very unfair, because education is not just a privilege, but is needed to change the world. However, many people do not understand this. “You are insane,” people would tell Khadija, because they did not think this plan would work out. But Khadija did not give up. She ran a pilot project from 2011 to 2015, to see if it would be successful. There were twenty spots available for fellows, and over six hundred people applied. The pilot prevailed. Consequently, Teach For Pakistan became an independent running program in 2017.

Tooba Aktar is another member of the program and is its Chief Program Officer. There is a six-week training course to determine if you are qualified to be a fellow, she said. Tooba is the one who determines who gets in as well. She has also taught 6th and 7th grade English to girls, who according to her, were good students and never negative. They always had a smile on their face, Tooba said. And they work so hard. At first, when Tooba Aktar used to ask the girls questions, not a single girl would raise their hands. Imagine 13-year-olds with pin drop silence, she said, with a disbelieving scoff. And as I got to know them better, I realized that the silence was there because they were taught to be quiet. As Tooba worked more with her students, they also became livelier and wanted to learn more, as they wanted to be better educated. 

Currently Teach For Pakistan has 183 fellows, 352 alumni leaders, and has impacted 141 schools in Pakistan. This program is part of a bigger association “Teach for All,” which has already made an impact in sixty-three countries, and currently has over 14,000 teachers, and a total of over 94,000 alumni. Only 1.8% of teachers are selected each year, because so many people apply for the limited spots available. 

The Teach For Pakistan program in 2025 remains a successful one and has resulted in multiple benefits. Not only does it help students learn a great deal in just two years, but it also teaches them confidence and communication skills, which are essential for them to succeed. Members of Teach For Pakistan continue to help students achieve a brighter future through higher academic achievement.

More information on Teach For Pakistan is available here:  https://iteachforpakistan.org/

(The author, Zahra Amin, is a high school freshman.