UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All sign a 5.5 million euro pan-European partnership
• This partnership with the global education network Teach For All aims at helping teachers at underserved schools across Europe
• Teach for Austria: As part of the three-year cooperation with the UniCredit Foundation, the number of teachers in the first and second year of training will be further increased until 2026, enabling teaching for more than 11,500 pupils and students at 80 partner schools and kindergartens
UniCredit Foundation and the global education network Teach For All have launched a three-year partnership worth 5.5 million euros, providing quality education to underserved schools in Europe and promoting education equality across the continent. This transformative partnership will focus on six countries where the bank operates: Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Romania, and Slovakia. The Foundation is also supercharging support of Teach For All to train educators to work in underserved schools in these nations.
Through this multi-million-euro commitment and boosted support, UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All will combat educational disparities experienced by children throughout Europe and prevent early school dropout rates among youth, by giving young people the quality of education they deserve to seek new opportunities and fulfil their career ambitions.
The partnership between UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All builds upon the strong relationship between the network of independent partner organisations and UniCredit Group, first established in 2022 and aims at helping fulfil the Foundation’s ambition of unlocking the potential of Europe’s next generation. They aim to achieve this by focusing their efforts to ensure access to quality education for children and young people, as Teach For All aims to do internationally.
A March UNICEF report found that educational inequality in Europe and Central Asia had been deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, despite continued efforts by governments, with school closures affecting 63 million pupils and students.
The report also observes that 3% of primary school age children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia were not in school, compared with 1% in Western Europe, from 2013-2019. Romania, one of the UniCredit markets supported by the TFA partnership, has a particularly high rate of primary school age dropouts: 12% for boys and 13% for girls.
11.1% of young men and 8% of young women in the EU are early leavers from education and training, according to Eurostat. Leaving education early has life-long ramifications, cutting off employment opportunities which can lead to reduced potential earnings, compromised mental health and social exclusion.
Since launching their collaboration with a roughly 2 million euro investment in 2022, UniCredit Group and Teach For All have already made a profound impact on young people’s education across Europe. Together they successfully trained and supported 592 diverse fellow teachers within the Teach For All network in Europe, improving the educational experiences of over 40,600 pupils and students across the continent in just one year.
The new 5.5 million euro partnership will help the UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All to deliver significantly improved results, empowering the Teach For All network teachers in training and local communities to reimagine the education systems in under-resourced areas and build more inclusive school environments that offer quality education for all children, year on year. The Foundation and Teach For All’s network partners will train over 1,400 extraordinary teachers, providing education to over 83,000 students by 2026. In addition, network partners will develop the leadership skills of more than 3,600 alumni and more than 10,870 system-wide teachers.
Andrea Orcel, Chairman of UniCredit Foundation, said: “I am delighted to announce the UniCredit Foundation’s partnership with Teach For All. Europe has the potential to be a major economic bloc – to lead the way in global economic and social progress, fostering a future of shared prosperity. This is why our Bank and the Foundation have made it our shared mission to unlock this potential. The UniCredit Foundation is dedicated to equipping students with the essential tools to build a better future for themselves, their communities, and our continent. Together with Teach For All, we will advance equitable education within six UniCredit regions, nurturing collective leadership in young people and, in the long term, driving societal transformation.”
“We are proud to announce this partnership with UniCredit Foundation,” said Wendy Kopp, Co-Founder and CEO of Teach For All. “Their support will be instrumental in helping us to scale our work and develop a pipeline of teacher-leaders who continue to change educational outcomes for some of the most marginalized students in Europe. Together, we are committed to ensuring that every child has access to opportunities to fulfil their potential and shape better futures for themselves and the world.”
Robert Zadrazil, CEO of UniCredit Bank Austria: “Our partnership with Teach for Austria is very important to us, as there is still a lot to be done in Austria to ensure equal educational opportunities for all children and young people. That is why UniCredit Bank Austria is making its contribution - especially by contributing our expertise in financial education and digitalisation. My own voluntary work at a school in Vienna was a valuable experience for me and I am convinced that we can positively influence the education and development perspectives of young people with this programme. I would also like to thank all my colleagues involved - their active involvement at Austrian schools is truly inspiring”.
Severin Broucek, CEO of Teach for Austria: “By joining forces internationally, we can create innovative formats to support our pupils and students as well as our fellows. The three-year partnership with the UniCredit Foundation allows us to reach 11,500 pupils and students at 80 partner schools and kindergartens. We now have the opportunity to also make further strategic developments in the direction of pre-school education, bringing our fellows programme to socioeconomically disadvantaged kindergartens. The work for equal opportunities has to start as early as possible in order to empower young people in the long term“.
This partnership brings the Foundation's total investment in educational interventions from the start of the year to 18.1 million euros, constituting 91% of UniCredit Group's allocated 20 million euros for the Foundation this year. This commitment underscores the UniCredit Foundation's dedication to the cause and its pivotal role within the bank's overarching social strategy, which has seen the group issuing a total volume of around 8 billion Euros in social financing via micro credit, impact financing and lending to disadvantaged areas. This is all part of a total amount of ESG issuance for the FY 2022 and first 9 months of 2023 of about 80 billion. In addition to this, UniCredit Group invested a total of 36.5 million in 2022 in social and philanthropic initiatives, 8 million of which was allocated to Education & young people.
Teach for Austria has been active for twelve years and has reached 53,000 children and young people through 523 fellows in 123 partner schools and 36 kindergartens. The two-year fellowship programme trains university graduates from various disciplines to become educational specialists and teachers. They then work at schools and kindergartens with socioeconomically disadvantaged children and young people. Their goal is to use their diverse academic backgrounds and professional experience to enrich the daily learning and educational careers of pupils and students and to prevent them from dropping out of school.
Teach for Austria alumni are ambassadors for equality in education. In the school year 2022/23, 107 Fellows (teachers) served more than 11,100 children and young people at 66 educational institutions (both schools and kindergartens) in Austria. More than 370 alumni have already completed the Fellowship Programme. In the 2022/23 school year, Teach for Austria had a total of 124 volunteers who, together with 54 Fellows, reached around 1,500 students.
UniCredit Bank Austria also supports the volunteer programme of Teach for Austria, in which bank employees commit to teaching 20 hours per semester at a school and to supporting projects on financial education, digitalisation or careers. Robert Zadrazil, CEO of UniCredit Bank Austria, and Marion Morales Albinaña-Rosner, Member of the Management Board responsible for Private Banking and Wealth Management at UniCredit Bank Austria, have already volunteered in this programme.
Marion Morales Albinaña-Rosner's volunteer work also led to the idea for the “Girls Go Finance” project, a workshop exclusively for girls and young women, which was attended by a total of 160 students from eight schools in June 2023. In the school year 2022/23, UniCredit Bank Austria provided 19 volunteers who taught in 15 classes at nine schools and reached around 290 students. Marion Morales Albinaña-Rosner concludes: “In many areas, girls and women still don't have the same opportunities as men. They often earn less and therefore have a smaller pension later on because they spend a long time looking after their children. In my opinion, financial education, financial independence and self-confidence are important cornerstones to counteract this”.
UniCredit Foundation, UniCredit Foundation
This Third Sector Body (TSB) is the corporate foundation of UniCredit Group whose purpose is to unlock the potential of Europe’s next generation. Its mission is to empower young people across Europe by creating equal opportunities in education and to support them in making their way in life and the professional world. The Foundation's initiatives aim at combating school drop-out, enhancing employability, encouraging university attainment and promoting study and research. The Foundation is committed to supporting communities in all countries where UniCredit Group operates.
Teach For All, teachforall.org
Teach For All is a global network of more than 60 independent, locally led and governed partner organisations and a global organisation that works to accelerate the progress of the network. Each network partner recruits and develops promising future leaders to teach in their nations’ under-resourced schools and communities and, with this foundation, to work with others, inside and outside of education, to ensure all children are able to fulfil their potential. Teach For All’s global organization works to increase the network’s impact by supporting the development of new organizations, fostering network connectivity and learning, providing coaching and consulting and enabling access to global resources for the benefit of the network.
Teach for Austria, teachforaustria.at
Teach For Austria is part of the international Teach For All network. The organisation was established as a non-profit foundation in 2011. Teach For Austria's two-year Leadership Development Programme trains university graduates from a wide range of disciplines to become education specialists and teachers, known as fellows. These fellows work at schools and kindergartens with socioeconomically disadvantaged children and young people who are at high risk of dropping out of school.
Enquiries:
UniCredit Bank Austria Media Relations
Matthias Raftl, Tel. +43 (0) 5 05 05-52809
E-Mail: matthias.raftl@unicreditgroup.at
Teach for Austria
Toni Kronke, Tel. +43 699 16456518
E-Mail: toni.kronke@teachforaustria.at