Peter Tabichi recipient of Global Teacher Prize 2019

Peter Tabichi, a science teacher from rural Kenya who donates most of his salary to help poorer students, has been crowned the world’s best teacher and awarded a $1m prize in Dubai. He is the maths and physics teacher at Keriko secondary school in Pwani Village, in a remote part of Kenya’s Rift Valley, has won the Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize 2019. Tabichi gives away 80% of his income to help the poorest students who live in poverty and are either orphans or from single-parent families. He changed the lives of his students in many ways, including the introduction of science clubs and the promotion of peace between different ethnic groups and religions. He has also helped to address food insecurity among the wider community in the famine-prone Rift Valley. Drug abuse, teen pregnancies, drop-outs, and suicide are common, and the school has one computer, poor internet access, and a student-teacher ratio of 58:1. In spite of those circumstances, Tabichi’s science students have won various national science competitions, and qualified to participate at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2019 in the US.