History, Mission and Ethos

T2T received over 950 applications for the first 30 places on the CVT programme. We have now trained over 50 teachers, over 75% of whom are women. The CVTs attend an initial intensive 8-day residential training prior to being deployed in schools in their own villages. This connection to the local community, culture and language is core to the success of the CVT programme.

“The CVT programme is local, scalable, can be adapted to any context, particularly where national education systems fail to serve students, and where skilled local teachers are urgently needed.”

Anita Lowenstein Dent, CEO and Founder of T2T

Teach2Teach International (T2T) was founded in 2017 in the belief that all children should have equal access to high-quality education, and that all young people have the right to training that provides them with skills to pursue meaningful careers and become leaders and change makers in their communities.

T2T’s innovative flagship programme - the Community Volunteer Teacher (CVT) programme - uses a unique, learn-by-doing educational methodology to simultaneously address the challenges of lack of quality jobs and training for young people and lack of quality education. It also addresses the challenges framed in the Sustainable Development Goals of gender inequality, lack of inclusion - particularly for marginalised groups - and unequal opportunities within and amongst nations. Piloted in Ghana in 2019, T2T created the CVT programme by adapting and enhancing the highly respected Complementary Basic Education (CBE) methodology, devised by our partners School for Life, Ghana (SfL), which has over 20 years of evidence base and has helped millions of out-of-school children in Ghana enter mainstream education. Our transformative programme is highly adaptable, impactful, value for money and scalable with a large multiplier effect. The CVT programme provides a local solution to a global problem.

Founded by Anita Lowenstein Dent, T2T operates the CVT programme in areas of high poverty and deprivation, with plans to serve migrant, refugee and conflict affected communities. More information on the CVT programme can be found here, and information about Teach4Health is found here.

T2T believes education is an essential, scalable tool to achieve social justice. Our mission is to ensure that ‘no child is left behind’.

Teach2Teach International is an education charity founded in response to two global challenges: low educational attainment of primary school children, and high levels of youth unemployment. Currently, two thirds of children in the Northern Region of Ghana live in poverty (UNICEF 2020), and only 54% complete primary school, compared to 94% nationally.

Our mission is to support under-performing, national education systems and schools globally, reaching as many under-served communities as possible. By responding to these issues we can help lift children and youth out of poverty, minimise early and forced marriage, and provide young people in the most deprived areas with essential skills and optimism for the future.

T2T challenges poverty and inequality by expanding access to and improving the quality of education and training, and by inspiring leadership for social justice. T2T’s flagship Community Volunteer Teacher programme extends knowledge and understanding, inspires independent thought, critical thinking, a sense of community responsibility and a commitment to the common good. Our ‘learn-by-doing’ methodology, proven to work over 20 years, creates a scalable new model with a huge multiplier effect.

T2T’s work responds directly to:

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 1 - No poverty, which determines economic growth is essential to ensure development is sustainable;

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 - Quality Education for All, which holds that obtaining a quality education is key to improving people’s lives and sustainable development;

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 - Gender Equality, ensuring that women’s rights are recognised as human rights;

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth, which emphasises that sustainable economic growth requires societies to create the conditions that allow people to have quality jobs;

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 - Reduce inequality within and among nations. The core conviction that underlies all of Teach2Teach’s work is that education is the most important and effective tool that communities can use to lift themselves out of poverty.

We also contribute to the UN Initiative, “Education cannot wait” which: ‘aims to reach all crisis affected children and youth with safe, free and quality education by 2030.’