In collaboration with Team Solihull fundraisers, NilCarbon funding and with the generous financial and project management support of IMHO USA, Tea Leaf Trust will build a designated Teacher Training Centre beside our flagship Tea Leaf Centre (TLC) in Maskeliya. The new space will immediately increase classroom capacity for an additional 25 Main Diploma (MD) students per year and establish a dual-purpose facility:
- Teacher Training Centre — training the best MD graduates into high-quality teachers to staff TLT’s growing network.
- Community Hub — providing internet access, job guidance, and a lending library for alumni and residents.
This project directly addresses oversubscription at Maskeliya (over 400 applicants for 165 places annually) and underpins our planned expansion from 5 to 10 centres in the next three years, creating a sustainable staffing pipeline.
Why It Matters
- Meeting demand: Frees classroom space to accommodate an extra MD cohort each year.
- Sustainable staffing: Trains 20 talented MD graduates annually who excelled in the Children’s English Programme but due to life challenges, narrowly missed the grades required for government teacher training.
- Community benefit: Offers public access to digital resources, careers guidance, and a library year-round.
Team Solihull’s focus on education with “indefinite benefits” at relatively low cost is fully-aligned with this initiative, which delivers compounding outcomes in education, livelihoods, and organisational capacity.
Dual Purpose Facility
1) Teacher Training Centre
- Annual intake of 20 trainees drawn from high-performing MD graduates.
- Comprehensive training in pedagogy, classroom management, and IT-assisted teaching.
- Trainees receive stipends to cover travel and food.
- Direct supply of trained, values-aligned teachers for TLT’s expansion from 5 to 10 centres.
2) Community Hub
- Public internet access and job-search support for alumni and local residents.
- Lending library for study and personal development.
- Space for workshops on CV writing, interview skills, and digital literacy.
Strategic Value
- Compounding impact: Infrastructure that delivers growing annual benefits in both learning and staffing.
- Flagship leverage: Located at TLT’s most oversubscribed centre, setting a model for replication.
- Directly demand-led: Tackles bottlenecks in space and staffing while expanding community services.
Headline Impact Since 2010
Additional Annual Impact from Year 1 of Operation
Monitoring and Reporting
- Education KPIs: MD enrolment, completion rates, CEP delivery hours, learning progression gradebooks.
- Community KPIs: Hub footfall, job guidance uptake, service project reach.
- Teacher Training KPIs: Trainee numbers, placement rates, 12-month retention.
- Reporting: Quarterly dashboards and annual summaries
Donating
If you wish to donate specifically for this project please either email us at [email protected] or leave the comment “Teacher Training Centre” alongside donating at the below link.
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