Pestalozzi International

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Pestalozzi International

Nurturing Environment
With child-centred care looking after their emotional wellbeing, encouraging them to take care of others and inspiring their ambition.

Pestalozzi International provides life-changing education to disadvantaged children in the Global South, focusing on vocational skills, emotional well-being, and social mobility. In poor rural areas of India, Nepal and Zambia our experts work with communities to select the brightest 10 -year-old children (two girls for each boy) among those held back by extreme rural poverty, displacement due to conflict, gender stereotypes, poor education and the pressure to work and earn a living. With the encouragement of their families, we offer these children the opportunity to leave behind these difficulties, and move to one of the Pestalozzi Villages where they receive:

Excellent Education
At high quality local schools, living in a conducive environment for learning and receiving additional academic support from staff and peers. Practical Life Skills
Children grow food and take pride in keeping their village clean and tidy. They learn crafts to develop skills they can use in future life.

18/09/2026

We’re excited to launch our new SkillsHub campaign on GlobalGiving, with a goal to support 50 young people in Zambia.

For young people facing barriers to education and employment, learning a trade can open doors. But SkillsHub goes further than vocational training alone.

Alongside practical vocational training, young people strengthen their foundational Maths and English, take part in mindset development and gain experience in real workplaces. Together, these elements help address the barriers that can stand between completing training and turning it into lasting opportunity.

We are already seeing what that opportunity can lead to.

Young people are progressing beyond SkillsHub with greater confidence, real experience and a clearer path forward. For some, that means their first job or the chance to continue their education. For others, it means starting their own business and creating an income for themselves. As young people become more independent, the impact can reach their families and communities too.

Now, we want to give 50 more young people that opportunity.

Through our new GlobalGiving campaign, your donation can help make the SkillsHub journey possible, giving more young people the chance to build a future on their own terms.

Whether you donate or share the campaign, you can help us reach our goal.

Help turn skills into lasting opportunity. ❤️

Support our SkillsHub campaign on GlobalGiving: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/give-50-young-zambians-skills-for-a-better-future/

09/09/2026

Our Future Leaders in Nepal recently came together to mark Indigenous Day - celebrating Indigenous cultures and identities, and recognising the importance of protecting the knowledge and traditions passed from one generation to the next.

Within a community of young people from different backgrounds, it was also an opportunity to share, learn from one another and celebrate the identities that each person brings with them.

Education doesn’t happen separately from identity. When young people understand where they come from, feel that their own identity is valued and learn to value the experiences of others, they develop a deeper sense of belonging, perspective and responsibility to the people around them. It also means recognising the knowledge and perspectives held within different cultures and communities, and creating space for those voices to be heard.

As young people grow into leaders, those foundations shape how they see and engage with the world around them. The aim isn’t to create one type of leader, but to help each young person recognise the value of their own experiences while learning to listen to, respect and work alongside people whose lives and perspectives may be different from their own.

That thinking is woven throughout Future Leaders, where academic learning sits alongside social, ethical and emotional development, active citizenship and opportunities to put leadership into practice - developing not only what young people know, but how they understand themselves, others and the world around them.

Our role isn’t to tell young people who they should become, but to create the conditions in which they can discover that for themselves - grounded in who they are, connected to their communities and equipped to decide how they want to contribute.

A beautiful celebration of the identities, cultures and experiences that make up our Pestalozzi Nepal community. ❤️

Help us create more opportunities for young people to learn, lead and shape their own futures: https://lnkd.in/diAf8-gc

02/09/2026

Our thoughts are with all those affected by the devastating floods and landslides across Nepal, India and Tibet, and with the communities facing such profound loss and disruption.

For Pestalozzi, this region holds very personal connections. For many years, young people from all these areas have been part of our Future Leaders programme and our wider global family of students, alumni, colleagues and friends. We are thinking especially of them, their families and communities at this difficult time.

As rescue and relief efforts continue across the region, our thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones, those still waiting for news, and the many communities facing the enormous task of recovering and rebuilding.

12/08/2026

Every young person begins life with potential. Too often, it's opportunity that is unequally distributed.

For millions of young people around the world, the future is shaped long before they have the chance to shape it themselves. Not because they lack ability, but because poverty limits access to the opportunities, encouragement and belief that allow potential to flourish.

At Pestalozzi International, we exist to change that.

We identify young people with the talent, character and ambition to lead, then nurture them through an education that develops the whole person: Head, Heart and Hands. Because leadership is about far more than academic achievement. It is about learning to think independently, care deeply, and act with purpose.

On International Youth Day, we're celebrating the young people who are already demonstrating what becomes possible when potential is recognised and invested in. Their leadership doesn't begin when they leave school. It is shaped every day through the relationships they build, the values they develop, and the choices they make to strengthen the communities around them.

When we invest in young people, we don't simply change individual futures. We help nurture the compassionate, enterprising leaders who will strengthen their communities, contribute to their nations, and shape a better future for others.

Join us in nurturing the next generation of leaders.

👉 Donate today: https://www.pestalozzi.international/donate

28/07/2026

India is in the middle of one of the largest clean energy transitions in the world. Sumit, a Pestalozzi International alumnus from India, is doing research at the University of Warwick that sits right at the heart of it.

Invited to Warwick as part of their Undergraduate Overseas Visiting Research Programme, his research focused on the recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries using Deep Eutectic Solvent - a greener, less harmful alternative to conventional recycling methods. The work addresses a genuinely pressing problem: how to reduce battery waste, recover critical materials, and support the growing demand for sustainable energy storage without creating new environmental damage in the process.

It is research that matters particularly in India, where rapid growth in electric vehicles and renewable energy is creating an urgent need for sustainable battery supply chains. The solutions being developed in laboratories today will shape how that transition happens - and who benefits from it.

He is currently completing a Masters in Engineering at IIT Kharagpur, one of the most prestigious institutions in the country. Getting to that point takes ability, but it also takes something harder to teach. Confidence in your own thinking, clarity of purpose, and the belief that you have something real to contribute.

Pestalozzi works to build all of that, alongside academic achievement, from the earliest stages of a young person's education. We believe that who a young person becomes is shaped as much by their values and confidence as by their qualifications. Both matter. Both can be built.

The young people we support are capable of extraordinary things. Your support helps us reach more of them: https://www.pestalozzi.international

24/07/2026

Pascal grew up in the Meheba Refugee Settlement Camp in Zambia as a Congolese refugee. In his own words, most of his dreams felt impossible to achieve.

Then he was selected by Pestalozzi International.

After graduating, Pascal secured a full scholarship through the Mastercard Foundation to study at Kwame Nkrumah University in Ghana. While studying, he founded the Hope for Refugees Foundation - an NGO dedicated to empowering marginalised single refugee mothers and supporting students back in the Meheba camp where he grew up.

To date, the Foundation has provided empowerment capital to seven single refugee mothers, enabling them to run their own businesses and improve their livelihoods. Over 30 refugee students are now being mentored, receiving leadership support and free stationery to ease their education.

Pascal now serves as Alumni Liaison Officer at Pestalozzi International, helping to shape the lives of fellow students and alumni who need extra support.

At Pestalozzi, we talk about developing leaders for lasting change. Pascal shows what that actually looks like - someone who reached further than his circumstances suggested was possible, and immediately used that reach to pull others forward.

Pascal's story is one of many. If you'd like to support the next one, visit https://lnkd.in/diAf8-gc

20/07/2026

Earlier this month, our Future Leaders Programme students in Zambia took part in CAS Camp - four days of creativity, activity and service that sit at the heart of how we develop young leaders.

CAS is built on the belief that the qualities which make a good leader are developed through experience, not instruction. Resilience, teamwork, creative problem-solving, the willingness to serve others and to think critically about the world around them - these aren't things you can absorb passively. They have to be practised, tested and earned.

Students worked through physical challenges, team activities and community service. We saw students push through difficulty, find solutions under pressure, look out for one another, and step into roles they perhaps hadn't seen themselves in before.

That shift - from student to leader - is what the Future Leaders Programme is built around. For many of the young people on our programme, four days like this offer something genuinely formative: a chance to be stretched beyond what feels comfortable, surrounded by peers doing the same, with adults alongside them who take their development seriously. It is in that environment that young people begin to see what they are genuinely capable of.

Every student carried the same motto into camp: Discover. Serve. Lead. Over four days, we watched them live up to it.

To find out more about our Future Leaders Programme, visit https://www.pestalozzi.international/programmes/future-leaders

23/06/2026

"Let children learn, not earn."

Around 1.1 million children in Nepal are still engaged in child labour - working in brick kilns, carpet factories, fields, and restaurants. For families living in poverty, sending a child to work instead of school can feel like the only way to survive. The cost of that choice isn't always felt immediately. But it shapes everything that follows.

Our Grade 8 students in Nepal made this poster for the World Day Against Child Labour. They researched the issue, debated it among themselves, and chose every word on it. This is what they decided the world needed to hear.

What child labour steals isn't just time in a classroom. It's a child's chance to discover what they love, what they're good at, and what kind of person they want to become. At Pestalozzi, nurturing a genuine love of learning through how we teach, not just what we teach, is where everything starts.

In practice that means student-led discussions where teachers listen as much as they talk. Projects rooted in real issues affecting their own communities. The tools to research, question, and form their own views - and the trust to act on them.

These students already understand that child labour is a serious social problem, that poverty drives it, and that it damages children's health, education and futures. This is Pestalozzi in action: young people who don't just understand a problem but feel a responsibility towards it. We didn't give them that conviction. We just made space for it.

The next generation of leaders who will tackle Nepal's hardest challenges are already in classrooms. What they are taught, and how they are taught to think critically, independently and with purpose, will determine everything.

👉If you'd like to support that work, you can find out more at: https://lnkd.in/diAf8-gc

20/06/2026

Today is World Refugee Day.

Afonso arrived at Mayukwayukwa refugee camp in Zambia from Angola speaking neither English nor any local language. His family struggled to make ends meet. Like so many of the 106,000 refugees and former refugees living in Zambia today, his future felt uncertain before it had really begun.

Selected by Pestalozzi International, he was given something he hadn't had before: stability, support, and an education that believed in him. He arrived overwhelmed. He graduated as Head Boy.

After graduating, he became a maths coach through Edulution, working with over 220 students in the camp and nearby schools - and was elected Youth Chair for all activities in his UNHCR camp. Alongside that, he went on to sponsor five children's education and co-found Zam-Ango Records, a music group built to keep at-risk young people connected, inspired, and off a harder path.

Afonso didn't just build a life for himself. He turned around and built one for others too.

At Pestalozzi International, finding that person is something we take seriously. We travel to the places other organisations often miss - refugee camps, remote villages - and we sit with families, visit homes, and talk with children about their lives and what they dream of doing. We're not only looking for top marks. We look for young people who are kind, curious, brave, and want to lift others up.

Afonso is proof of what becomes possible when a young person gets that chance. There are many more who never do - not for lack of drive or ability, but for lack of opportunity.

This World Refugee Day, your support goes directly towards giving a young person the education and platform to build a life - and a community - they can be proud of: https://lnkd.in/diAf8-gc

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency PestalozziWorld Zambia Pestalozzi Zambia Alumni

16/06/2026

Before a child can lead, they need to feel like they matter. ❤️

Yet millions of children in the Global South grow up in communities where the education system was never built with them in mind - where potential goes unseen, and ambition has nowhere to go. At Pestalozzi International, belonging isn't a backdrop to education. It's the foundation of it.

Over 250 years ago, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi believed that learning begins in the heart - that before a child can think critically or act with purpose, they must first feel loved, safe, and valued. That conviction still lives at the core of everything we do.

Through Social, Emotional, and Ethical (SEE) learning, we nurture the whole person - building not just knowledge, but empathy, moral courage, and the confidence to lead. Because the leaders our world needs most aren't just the most qualified. They're the ones who remember where they came from, and choose to give back.

Every child we work with across Zambia, India, and Nepal carries that potential. Our role is simply to believe in it - loudly, wholeheartedly, and without exception. And the proof is there: 96% of our alumni stay in their home countries. Alumni are connected to more than 85 NGOs and community groups. 800,000 children now being taught by our alumni teachers.

Love, it turns out, is a pretty powerful development strategy.

The world needs leaders shaped by love, not just learning. Help us nurture them. Support a child's journey: https://lnkd.in/gGTURtri

Pestalozzi India

Address

Worth Corner Business Park
Crawley
RH107SL

Telephone

+447715600257

Website

https://pestalozzi.international/

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