A high quality education starts with high quality teachers. Teach for the Philippines co-founder Clarissa Delgado tells Gen.T how she's bringing some of the country's top graduates to teach in its classrooms
In the What Matters To Me series, a Generation T honouree describes what they do, why they do it, and why it matters
Clarissa Delgado is helping to ensure that a broad range of Philippine children receive an education that sets them up for a brighter future. She is the co-founder and CEO of Teach for the Philippines, part of a global network of organisations that recruit graduates of top universities and send them out to teach in schools in socially disadvantaged areas. Here, she describes her work in her own words.
See also: What Matters To Me: Andy Chan
I began my career in 2009 managing a Randomised Control Trial [RCT] for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Poverty Action Lab. The RCT was with Sa Aklat Sisikat Foundation, a local NGO working on functional literacy. Apart from proving statistically significant positive results, which then led directly to the expansion and transformation of Sa Aklat Sisikat into Teach for the Philippines in 2012, the economists behind the Poverty Action Lab—one of whom helped us set up our relationship and the survey—just won the Nobel Prize in Economics. We could not be more thrilled for Dr [Esther] Duflo; it is so well deserved and we are so thankful that her group continues to be part of our journey.
One of the many exciting things we will be working on over the next few years is to immerse our work deeper into the history and culture of our country