Our dear friend Jawahar Tadepalli passed away from COVID-19 on June 19th, 2021. With his passing, we have lost a dear friend, an inspirational leader, and a wonderful colleague. His life was nothing short of inspirational. He defied poverty to single-handedly provide financial stability for his family, and created lifelong impact on his friends, colleagues, and students along the way. He was the sole breadwinner for his family, and is survived by his grandmother, mother, wife, and an 8-month old son. This fundraiser will help rebuild his family's future. 

Born into a poor household in rural Chintalapudi, Andhra Pradesh, he battled several hardships throughout his life. His parents were daily wage workers, who did not have the means to support his education, yet Jawahar worked hard to get scholarships and worked odd jobs to support himself. His determination paid off; he finished schooling at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya and subsequently completed his higher education at Government College, Rajahmundry. He valued the education he received and his passion for teaching and helping others led him to work as an educator - beginning with teaching in the classroom. He was Teach For India Fellow in the 2013 cohort, where he ignited young minds and ignited many dreams among his students. Jawahar would spend hours after school counselling his students and meeting parents to build relationships with them. He would also meet and talk with parents who were contemplating pulling their children out of school. He was an education pioneer in many ways - back in 2013, when using online teacher training tools faced a lot of resistance, he started the Firki training program to train teachers in his school. 

At Bridge International Academies, Jawahar led teacher training. His training inspired several hundred teachers and school leaders across India, and Nigeria. One of the former leadership team members at Bridge, was so impressed with his training skills that she wrote an email to the TFI leadership thanking them for nurturing fellows like Jawahar. 

Jawahar quickly rose to being the Director, Schools at Bridge Andhra Pradesh, where he supervised the running of schools. Last year, he took over as Project Director, for Bridge in Andhra Pradesh.

He led with grace, always with a smile on his face, and with words of encouragement for everyone. He spent countless hours in the classroom, nurturing pupils, coaching teachers, and even baby-sitting the young children attending school for the first time. He worked for each pupil with unyielding tenacity, especially during this past year; working hard to ensure that all our pupils had access to lessons, even as they studied from home, with limited resources.

Through these years of committed work, Jawahar brought financial stability to his family - single-handedly organized his sister’s marriage, built a house for his parents and took care of all family expenses. All seemed well when misfortune stuck: his beloved father was detected with cancer. To provide his terminally ill father with the best treatment, he sold their home but that didn't prove enough as he unfortunately lost his father too. His life was an uphill battle, one that he fought willingly and with a smile. It is terribly cruel that he had to leave us just when he had started to put those hardships behind him and was looking forward to a good life with his wife and his 8-month-old-son.

These are difficult times for his family who not only lost their shining beacon of love and warmth, but are also at the verge of losing the stability that Jawahar struggled his entire life to provide. Let’s come together and support his grief-stricken family.

If you would like to continue helping, please fill this form to register your support. The campaign team will get in touch with you to take it forward.