UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All sign a 5.5 mln euro Pan-European partnership

UniCredit Foundation and 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.

UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All’s partnership builds upon the strong relationship between the network of independent partner organisations and the 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 in Europe to ensure access to quality education for children, 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 learners.

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 territories 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 students across the continent in just one year.

Our new 5.5 million-euro partnership will help the UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All to deliver even bigger and better 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.”

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.