In late September, Teach For All network students, teachers, alumni and staff members contributed to the global discussions at and around the Summit of the Future and the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.  Although the Summit’s product, the Pact for the Future, had a minimal focus on education as the underpinning of a future where everyone can thrive, our community highlighted that with the precarity of the world, educating the next generation differently is crucial for putting the planet on a different trajectory.   

This year, we were fortunate to have three former students of Teach For All network partners join us in New York to add their voices to the global discussion. Cinthya Perez (Enseña Perú), Om Gaikwad, and Tejashree Jadhav (both Teach For India),  joined the Summit of the Future Action Days, alongside meetings convened by UNESCO, Global Partnership for Education, UN Foundation, UNICEF, World’s Largest Lesson and Teach For All, bringing their perspectives to issues of education, climate, and youth empowerment. 

On Saturday 21, we convened a diverse group of cross-sector practitioners, thought leaders, heads of higher education institutions, and young people to discuss How we can build a movement among the rising generation to live into their values by making career choices that address our world’s most pressing challenges. We had a packed room of 30 thought leaders considering this question and generating ideas for how we can work together in pursuit of this aim.

On September 23, we brought together 80 friends and allies across the global education ecosystem to reflect on Strengthening cross border learning in education to prepare all students to shape a better future. This session featured addresses by H.E. Dr. Mohamad Maliki bin Osman, Second Minister for Education and Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Singapore, and Dr. Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, and participant perspectives on the importance of orienting our cross-border learning towards the purpose of students developing holistically, engaging practitioners in surfacing hypotheses and evidence, and focusing on the leadership orientations and mindsets needed to complement the technical practices and policy fixes that often get the most focus. 

During this session, we shared our plans for establishing a Global Institute in Singapore as a center of global learning, connection, and leadership development for people around the world who are working to transform classrooms, schools, and systems to holistically develop all students so that they can shape a better future for themselves and all of us.  

Later on September 23, we also collaborated with Atlassian Foundation, Global Schools Forum, and International Education Funders Group to host a session, How can philanthropy harness its power to accelerate progress in global education? Together we considered how to compliment and enable a focus on localization through invigorating the international education ecosystem, creating the vital infrastructure needed to enable local leaders to learn from each other. It was clear from our rich discussion that there is more to be done to foster the global movement to strengthen education and that philanthropy can help with this by investing both in local organizations and in the global architecture that allows for local practitioners to learn together and support each other.

Alongside Global Health Corps and WomenLift Health, on September 25 we organized Unlocking People Power: Why investing in local leadership development will accelerate progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. This session brought together speakers from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lemann Foundation, the Africa Leadership Institute, the World Bank, and other members of the People First Community for a conversation on how we can transform both the who and the how of local leadership in service of lasting transformation. We had 120 guests listening to such open, honest, and inspiring reflections on what more needs to be done to move the needle in investing in leadership development to deliver the SDGs. 

Finally, we were excited to contribute to the Emerson Climate Science Fair. Our climate education colleagues spent three days on the High Line in New York sharing with an estimated 250,000 New Yorkers, media, youth, advocates, activists, business leaders, policy makers, investors, and visitors from around the world the inspiring work of climate educators and their students  across our global network and the value of connecting them to each other through our Climate Education and Leadership initiative. 

Although education wasn’t high up the global agenda at UNGA 79, Teach For All and our partners ensured that accelerating progress on  SDG4 was kept at the forefront of civil society, philanthropic, and government minds. As we look towards the World Social Summit in Qatar in November 2025, marking 30 years since the1995 Copenhagen Declaration that committed the world to promoting and attaining the goals of universal and equitable access to quality education, it will take collective leadership across society to make this a reality.