Kenyan mathematics and physics teacher Peter Tabichi receives the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher award and $1 million cash  prize at the event in Dubai.

Peter,who was chosen from 10,000 applicants in 180 countries,left his job at a private school to join the keriki secondary school in Pwani Village, Nakuru Kenya gave most of his monthly earnings to poor people in his community. He teaches science in a high school in the village of Pwani, Kenya.

The public school where he teaches has just a single computer, very poor internet access, has no library or laboratory for the students and a teacher ratio of 58:1.

Drug abuse, teen pregnancies, drop outs from school and suicide are very common in the community with 95% of the students being poor and almost a third of the students are orphans or have only one parent alive.

Peter is credited with helping many of his students not only stay in school, but also take part in international science and engineering competitions and go on to college.

Despite all the challenges being faced by peter and the community, his science students have won various national science competitions, and qualified to participate at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2019 in the US. In 2017, only 16 out of the school’s 59 students went on to college, while in 2018, 26 of his students also went to college.

Varkey Foundation set the prize to show the importance of teaching at a moment when there is a severe global teacher shortage and research shows that it would help poor countries take up to 100 years to close the learning gap with other richer countries.  This would be put in place by telling the stories and showing the exceptional work of those that have contributed to the transformation of the lives of young ones especially Teachers.

Recipients are meant to have practices that can be scaled, should be innovative, and should have impacted their community beyond the classroom. It also awards practices that help children become global citizens, providing them with value based education that equips them for a world where they will potentially live, work and have confidence to socialize with people from different nationalities, cultures and religions.