Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America and Teach For All, shares her vision of our mandate to eliminate educational inequities during her Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship acceptance speech.

Teach For America is the AmeriCorps-affiliated program that brings high-achieving college grads to teach for two years in urban and rural schools throughout the United States. Teach For All is a network of Teach For America-inspired programs throughout the world run by independent social entrepreneurs.

According to the Skoll Awards page:

Wendy Kopp was struck by the inequities in the U.S. education system as a freshman at Princeton University where she saw smart, talented public school students struggle academically because of their weak preparation. At the same time, many of her peers were searching for jobs that would offer significance and meaning. In her senior thesis, she outlined a plan to build a national teachers corps by recruiting recent college graduates to teach in America’s neediest schools. Upon graduation, she began implementing her idea, raising $2.5 million and convincing schools to participate. In its first year, Teach For America placed 500 young teachers in low-income classrooms. Today, Teach For America fields 6,000 corps members, reaching 500,000 students; at the same time, its 14,000 alumni are serving as important leaders and advocates for education reform. Skoll funding will support Teach For All, a new organization created as a partnership between Teach For America and Teach First, the first adaptation of the program in the U.K., to help entrepreneurs in other countries who are pursuing the development of the Teach For America model locally.

Learn more about the Skoll Awards, or nominate an entrepreneur.

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