Teach for America's Wendy Kopp made a short trip to Mumbai to see Teach for India at work

Wendy Kopp hates the spotlight. And by her stiff stance and smile, we're guessing the founder of Teach For America doesn't enjoy posing for the camera either. On the last leg of her trip to Mumbai, Kopp breezes in and out of conference halls at the Akanksha Foundation Office (which is where Teach For India functions from), alternately clutching a mobile phone, a bag and a half-eaten slice of pizza. It's hard to believe that this unassuming slender 42-year-old has, for over two decades, stuck fast to her cause: equal education for all.

How it all began

It was in 1988 that Kopp, then a student of Princeton University, got to thinking about teaching. "I was always interested in the disparities of society... how where you study depends on where you were born. I felt our generation was searching for something...u00a0 That's how Teach For America (TFA) came about." A non-profit organisation, TFA picks students fresh out of college to take on two-year teaching stints at lower-economic schools.

Apparently, Princeton University wasn't excited with the idea initially. How about Kopp's family? She says: "My family has never viewed my work with as much interest as they view me as their daughter."

Much convincing later, TFA was established in 1989. "I don't think anyone thought we'd become so big. That 11 per cent Ivy League students would compete to be chosen by TFA, that 15 per cent graduates from Princeton would be potential TFA fellows (teachers) or that we'd have nearly five lakh students."

Getting there wasn't easy. Three years into it and TFA had a bad time, the 'dark years' as Kopp puts them. "Our funders backed out," she explains. Kopp never lost faith, though she admits to having sometimes questioned whether things would improve. They did.