Teacher wins $1 million prize for turning India’s slums into hundreds of open air classrooms
And Indian teacher who has established more than 800 learning centers across India for children who have never attended school has been named the winner of the $1 million global teacher prize from GEMS education.
Located in over 100 slums and villages Rouble Nagi’s classroom offer safe, inspiring spaces to help overcome the challenging conditions shaped by poverty — child labor, early marriage, irregular attendance, and a lack of infrastructure.
Rather than seeing these realities as barriers, Ms. Naji designs education around real life: flexible schedules for working children, hands-on learning using recycled materials, and practical skills that demonstrate immediate values to families.
As a result, her programs have reduced dropout rates by more than 50% and have significantly improved school retention.
She plans to use the $1 million prize money to build a free vocational institute and digital literacy training program to help transform the lives of millions more young people.
It all started after she was asked to do an art workshop as an artist in her early 20s. “I met a child who’d never seen a pencil, and it was the turning point of my life.”
Over the last two decades, she has helped bring more than one million children into the formal education system and one of her not-so-secret weapons is art.
She has transformed abandoned walls into large interactive murals that teach everything from reading, math, and science, to hygiene, history, environmental awareness, the social responsibility.
“By bringing education to the most marginalized communities, she has not only changed individual lives but strengthened families and communities.”