Our People
The KER Team
Shaheen Mistri
Shaheen is the founder at Akanksha Foundation and the CEO at Teach For India. In 2016, an idea to explore the potential of student leadership sparked and it soon spread like wildfire across the country in the form of the Kids Education Revolution. She founded Kids Education Revolution as an incubator project at Teach For India, which has now grown into an international movement of 250 Student Revolutionaries and 1500 Educators.
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Kritika Rawat
Kritika is currently leading the Kids Education Revolution. While managing the team and leading us, she holds the vision of the larger movement in the center and ensures that the ship that reimagines education keeps on sailing. She is also one of the masterminds behind the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ that reveals the current reality of our education system and emphasizes on the need to reimagine education.
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Zui Mansata
Zui leads a core part of our work at KER - the learning loop. She has captured and led teams across the country to explore diverse stories of growth and change that have been led by students in the form of projects. These stories are a major contribution in our evolving understanding of the potential of student leadership and how we can actively work towards creating enabling spaces for kids to become changemakers.
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Devisha Narekuli
Devisha has been the backbone of our team. She manages and takes care of all the nuts and bolts. In 2020, she was not only one of the geniuses behind ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ but she also managed the kids and educators that participated in KER Week 2020'. She plans and executes our KER Retreats where we deep-dive into our 3 Ps and 8 Cs and the Fellows of the Future track where we explore student-educator partnerships and build skills for student-led teaching projects.
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Shivani Patekar
Shivani has been working through the year in mentoring and building skills for a selected group of students across the country, known as the ‘KER National Committee’. Her mentorship has facilitated the group of students to deepdive into their projects and grow into magnificent changemakers. She is also building KER courses on Teach For India’s teacher-training portal, Firki, which focus on spreading and exploring the KER Principles in classrooms across the country.
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Shounak Pande
Shounak is the Communications Associate at KER. He works on managing and creating content for this website, our social media - Facebook and Instagram, and our monthly newsletter - KidsSpark. He also oversees the communications, from design to decor, at KER Week. He manages the branding and outreach for KER. Also, he has led the virtual learning opportunity called, 'KER Live' where KER hosts three virtual spaces - KER Chronicles, KER Kids Exchange and KER Masterclass.
Friends of KER
Kids Education Revolution is built on the ideas and practices of partners who are relentlessly innovating and working on reimagining education. We learn and spread ideas from our partners so that they can reach many more students and educators. Our revolution is built with our partners.
Reap Benefit
Reap Benefit is a non-profit organization that strives to be a platform that inspires youth to become action-based citizen champions called Solve Ninjas. Their mission is to activate Solve Ninjas in every community across India to tackle local and civic an environmental problems using local data, campaigns and solutions.
KER and Reap Benefit have been working closely together on a number of projects together to spread the idea of changemaking and a reimagined education. Reap Benefit students and educators have facilitated and co-led multiple KER spaces such as retreats, summits, and the KERx school workshops.
Slam Out Loud
Slam Out Loud uses performance and visual arts to enable children from disadvantaged communities to find their voice through creative expression. Through this practice, students develop the self, connect deeply with others, and increase social consciousness and awareness.
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Students from Slam Out Loud have consistently participated and performed at every KER National Summit and KER Night. Slam Out Loud has not only facilitated sessions at KER spaces, but they have led an entire day at KER Week 2020, where they put together workshops on art and expression for our 2020 Revolutionaries.
Teach For All
Teach For All is a global network of 53 independent, locally led and funded partner organizations whose stated shared mission is to "expand educational opportunity around the world by increasing and accelerating the impact of social enterprises that are cultivating the leadership necessary for change."
Teach For All has been instrumental in spreading the idea of KER to countries across the world. Students and educators from 9 different partner organizations have attended a KER space in-person. Additionally, through Teach For All’s Global Learning Lab and virtual platforms, we have been able to spread the idea of a reimagined education to more countries. As more partner organizations are interested in leading KER spaces in their own countries, we are setting up KERx Global in partnership with Teach For All.
Museum of Solutions
The Museum of Solutions, an initiative by JSW, is working towards creating an interactive immersive environment in Mumbai that will provide children with real life experiences to inspire and help them become change makers by creating solutions to the world’s problems.
In partnership with KER, MoS put together the Museum of Grey Sunshine for two consecutive KER National Summits. This museum was a pop-up experience that showcased the truth of the education system in India. It was an eye opening experience for all the attendees at the Summit, and left them feeling charged with the motivation to bring about a change.
iTeach Schools
iTeach is non-profit chain of secondary schools in Pune with the vision to fundamentally empower the most under-resourced children to create a destiny of their choice.
iTeach students and student alumni have been an instrumental part of KER since the beginning. Their students have not only participated in multiple spaces such as the KER National and Regional Summits, Fellows of the Future track, and the KER Learning Loop, but have also spearheaded and led the Greatest Show On Earth performances. In the academic year 2020-21, four iTeach Schools will be taking part in the year-long KERx School Program, where they will reimagine education with the students in their schools.
American School of Bombay
The American School of Bombay is an international independent school with classes running from Pre-K to Grade 12. With innovative and transformative structures, the school nurtures a diverse set of students and teachers from all over the world.
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Being one of KER’s initial partners, ASB has continued to lend their support over the years. The first two KER National Summits were held on the ASB campus in Mumbai which saw a turnout of over 500 people each year. ASB also lends their hand to a the reimagining education movement by sharing their resources and holding KER webinars so more teachers can learn from their innovative practices.
Avasara Academy
Avasara Academy is a progressive secondary school in Pune that educates girls of exceptional promise towards a lifetime of leadership. Avasara aims to equip students fully with the skills and knowledge to attend the world’s finest universities, serve as successful leaders in their communities and effect positive change in the world.
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Avasara Academy students have played a key role in many KER projects; from acting in the Greatest Show On Earth, to participating and being a part of the KER National Summit and Fellows of the Future track, these students have constantly pushed the bar of excellence.
Riverside
The Riverside School in Ahmedabad, is a vibrant education space where insights from cutting edge research are turned into working models of pedagogical practices with a single-minded focus: student wellbeing. Along with their Design For Change initiative, Riverside employs an ‘I Can’ mindset to their students as well as empowers millions of children across the world to problem-solve using the design thinking process of Feel, Imagine, Do, Share.
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Apart from facilitating sessions at the KER National Summit every year, Riverside students have also been facilitating online KER spaces through KER Live.
The Akanksha Foundation
The Akanksha Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to build the largest network of innovative schools in Mumbai and Pune that influences systemic reform and empowers children from low-income families to maximize their potential.
Since 2016, Akanksha students and teachers have both participated and facilitated multiple KER spaces. From participating in the National Summit and Learning Loop, to putting together the artwork for the Greatest Show On Earth, the Akanksha Foundation continues to be a core KER partner. In the academic year 2020-21, the Akanksha SMCMPS school from Mumbai is a part of the KERx School plan, and will be working to build student leadership structures in their school