Amir Abidi

- Founder Director

Amir AbidiAmir Abidi is an educationist who firmly believes that inclusion, access and quality in education for marginalized children and youth is the key to national progress and humanity. He is the Founder-Director of Taraqqi I Foundation (TiF) and the Executive Director of the Institute for Rural India Skills, Education and Entrepreneurship (iRISEe), which he co founded and started in Dec 2013. While doing his Bachelors in English Literature from Jamia Millia University, Delhi he also dabbled in Theatre and Fashion Designing. Having worked with some top designers in Delhi & Bombay he went on to do his Masters in Management and Marketing from The London College of Fashion (LCF). However, the dichotomy he felt of gilded couture business on one hand and the stark poverty where garments are mostly manufactured churned him to reflect on the deeper purpose of life for him. While working on his final research paper titled ‘Ethical Manufacturing & Marketing of Indian handicrafts’, he went through a deeply reflective phase where he started youth counselling and teaching voluntarily in a neighbourhood school in London. In the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy which shook every thinking person across the world especially in a dynamic multi-cultural London, he too was jolted to the core. Having brought up in a secular environment and with deep respect for universal human values, he decided to work more actively in youth counselling and education until 2005. Upon returning to India, with a clear vision and firm intent of working for the educational and social upliftment of the underprivileged, he did an intensive one year Programme in Education Leadership from iDiscoveri. Thereby, he has worked with organizations like Centre for Civil Society, Career Launcher, Education Development Centre on school curriculum, teacher training and educational management in various contexts, as well as at the strategic level to conceptualize, implement and monitor several path breaking initiatives. One such initiative, the MEGA-SkY (Minority Education for Growth & Advancement-Skills for Youth) project, was selected as one of the five best practices in Youth enablement across the world, at the Youth Employment Forum, ILO, Geneva in May 2012.