U&I Trust, is a volunteer-run registered charity, that empowers disadvantaged children and individuals with more than 62000 volunteers work in 40 cities across India impacting nearly 200000 lives.
U&I operates three programs – U&I Teach, U&I Empower and U&I Care.
U&I Teach enables children from disadvantaged communities across India to fight the cycle of poverty, by supporting them with their academics and the necessary life skills.
U&I Empower is for Corporate professionals to take social
action through engagement and meaningful and value-creating initiatives.
U&I Care is for Supporting residents in care homes by creating safe, structured, and empowering environments
that restore dignity, stability, and purpose. And equipping these homes to thrive independently through sustainable systems..
This program envisions an India where every child has access to meaningful learning experiences that inspire growth, confidence, and possibility. Through the U&I Teach Program, the aim is to nurture curious minds and resilient spirits by delivering holistic after-school education to students from underserved communities, equipping them to shape their own future with courage and capability.
The key interventions offered by the program are foundational literacy, foundational numeracy, academic support program, life skills intervention, external intervention and counselling. Across 40 Centers in India, there are 130 Active Learning Centers wherein 4200 students are benefited with the help of 515 Volunteer Leaders.
After completion of courses like Google Certified Educator Level 2, UNESCO MGIEP’s The Digital Teacher, UNICEF’s Accessibility, I wanted to engage with real students. I applied to U&I Teach to become a volunteer English teacher in early July 2026 for the academic year ending May 2027. After couple of rounds of interview, I was selected to teach English for two and half hours every Saturday in a locality close to Vasant Vihar, Delhi on the model of 1:2 teacher to student ratio.
When I went to the Centre for my classes in second half of July 2026, I saw 15-20 students (all under the age of 10) eagerly awaiting for us teachers as a beacon of hope. These after-school classes are conducted by volunteers, whose presence is not consistent every week, leaving 4-8 students per teacher. Non-availability of text books, climatic conditions exacerbate the challenges in imparting quality education to these economically marginalised students.
Over the first three months, the Social and Emotional Learning aspects of the teachers are tested wherein they understand, empathise, set goals and build healthy relation with students. As the classes are conducted in open spaces, understanding through elements of nature, objects seen, emotions experienced becomes the students vocabulary. Learning English words using games like word building, names of cities, countries and continents, their locations expand the curious students horizons. With the students extremely limited attention spans, the onus is on the teacher to be innovative, inclusive and inculcate the spirit of joy of learning. These are some of the takeaways in my limited actual teaching experience of underprivileged students.