Teacher who reached out to never-been-to-school kids honoured with $1m global prize

MUMBAI: For years, teacher and creator Rouble Nagi has utilized walls successful slums for instauration of murals to thatch children who seldom marque it to classrooms. On Thursday, that enactment was recognised connected a planetary signifier erstwhile she won the $1 cardinal Global Teacher Prize 2026 — world’s largest grant for educators.It was presented astatine World Governments Summit successful Dubai, an yearly gathering of leaders and policymakers. Now successful its tenth year, the prize — an inaugural of Varkey Foundation on with Unesco — honours teachers whose enactment reshaped learning outcomes and communities.Nagi, who has developed pedagogy astir art, began her enactment successful the slums of Mumbai astir a decennary ago. Accepting the award, she said designation of enactment rooted successful “education, compassion, consistency and service” had strengthened her resoluteness to proceed moving with children connected the margins.Through the Rouble Nagi Art Foundation, she has established implicit 800 learning centres successful India, reaching children who person ne'er attended schoolhouse arsenic good arsenic those enrolled but struggling to support pace. The absorption is foundational literacy, numeracy and basal conceptual knowing successful communities wherever ceremonial schooling often fails to hold.Nagi is possibly champion known for her murals, which usage colour, symbols and stories to impart lessons.

Neglected spaces successful settlements crook into open-air classrooms which thatch language, science, mathematics and history. Art is cardinal to her arsenic a instrumentality to instil confidence, heal and let aforesaid expression.Starting retired with a small, hands-on effort among families surviving successful fragile conditions, Nagi Art Foundation has expanded to villages and assorted municipality centres. The underlying belief, she said, is that inequality is not destiny, and that acquisition delivered with dignity tin span the spread betwixt exclusion and opportunity.

An pedagogue who is inspired by the bequest of Savitribai Phule, Nagi said she has remained committed to acquisition without discrimination.Under her Misaal India initiative, Nagi has besides acceptable up accomplishment centres for women, helping them execute fiscal independency and look arsenic entrepreneurs.Sunny Varkey, laminitis of Global Teacher Prize and GEMS Education, said Nagi represented “the precise champion of what teaching tin beryllium — courage, creativity and compassion”. Francis Joseph, CEO of GEMS Education, said Nagi’s power extended beyond accepted classrooms. Stefania Giannini, Unesco’s adjunct director-general for education, said the grant reaffirmed a “simple truth: teachers matter”.