At one of The Apprentice Project’s (TAP) annual Utsavs, where children showcase the projects they have built, an eighth-grade student once sat Monica Pesswani, co-founder of The Apprentice Project (TAP), down and told her she wanted to teach her financial literacy. Monica admitted honestly that she struggled with money management.
The student asked about her savings, goals, age and retirement plans before explaining simple interest, compound interest, SIPs and different approaches to saving. “At some point I remember thinking, this eighth grader is doing a better job of thinking about my finances than I am,” Monica recalls. For her, the moment captured what TAP has been trying to build: children who know their ideas have value and feel confident enough to share them, even with adults.
Monica’s journey to TAP was shaped by her own experience of growing up believing that marks measured her worth. After working across technology, startups and the corporate world, she realised that technical knowledge alone was not enough to navigate life. Confidence, communication, critical thinking, collaboration and decision-making mattered just as much. At 25, studying Leadership and Liberal Arts at Ashoka University helped her see herself differently. “We are not grade-generating machines. We have the ability to think, question, dream and design our own lives,” she says. “Ashoka gave me agency.”
A few years later, while volunteering in her sister’s Teach For India classroom, Monica saw children in a government school chasing the same definition of success she had pursued as a child: marks, ranks and being first. “It felt like looking at 60 versions of myself,” she recalls. She began asking why a child should have to wait until they are 25 to discover that they are capable of much more than what their report card tells them. That question became the foundation of TAP.
Bridging The Gap In India’s Classrooms
When TAP began, Monica identified two fundamental gaps in India’s education system. The first was an education model that often focused on absorbing, memorising and reproducing information. The second was the lack of opportunities for children to apply what they learnt to real-world problems.
At the same time, institutions such as UNICEF and the World Economic Forum were increasingly highlighting critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, problem-solving, adaptability and socio-emotional learning as essential future skills. Yet, Monica says, many underserved schools had little room for learning beyond academics.
“A child shouldn’t have access to a fundamentally different definition of learning simply because of the kind of school they attend,” she says.
TAP therefore sought to bring joy, choice and real-world application into learning. The goal was not to add another set of activities to an already crowded timetable, but to broaden the purpose of education. Children need to read, write and do mathematics, Monica says, but they also need to know how to think, communicate, collaborate, make decisions and navigate an increasingly complex world.
When Children Begin To See Themselves Differently
The impact, Monica says, becomes visible when children start applying what they learn to problems that matter to them.
One student whose grandfather was the head of a panchayat discovered through a project that child marriage was still prevalent in his community. Rather than simply accepting that it was wrong, he investigated why it was happening, looked at data from other villages, understood the relationship between women’s empowerment and community development, and eventually spoke to his grandfather about it.
“He wasn’t repeating something an adult had told him. He had formed his own position and learnt how to support it,” Monica says.
Other children have worked on problems closer to home. Some built coding games to educate their communities about garbage and its impact. Others worked on water filtration because sewage was affecting their communities, while some designed solar lighting solutions after noticing accidents on poorly lit roads.
There are quieter changes too. Children participating in financial literacy projects have gone home and taught their parents about needs versus wants, savings, investment and financial risk. For Monica, these moments are about more than financial knowledge.
“When a child goes home and starts asking, ‘Do we really need this, or do we want it?’ or begins talking to their parents about saving before spending, something bigger is happening,” she says. “They are not just understanding a financial concept; they are beginning to participate in decisions that affect their family.”
That, she believes, is the deeper meaning of agency. Financial literacy is not simply knowing what to do with money; it is feeling entitled to understand it, question it and make informed choices.
TAP’s programmes have also influenced how some children think about their futures. One student chose journalism because she believed telling real, unfiltered stories could change the world, while others went on to pursue engineering and other fields. For Monica, the most important outcome is not a completed project or a particular skill. It is that children begin asking better questions about themselves and the world around them and start seeing themselves as people who can understand, create and contribute.
Building Through Uncertainty
Building TAP also meant convincing an education system that future-ready skills deserved meaningful space alongside foundational literacy and numeracy.
“We weren’t arguing against what already existed. We were trying to expand the definition of what children needed,” Monica says.
The organisation soon learnt that systems cannot be changed simply by standing outside them and demanding change. In Maharashtra, TAP worked through spaces such as Bagless Saturdays, lab days and extra periods, forcing the team to become more agile in how it designed and delivered its programmes.
At the same time, TAP was building its own foundations: finding the right team, developing relationships with stakeholders, creating financial sustainability, designing the programme and figuring out how to measure its impact.
Then came COVID-19.
For a school-based organisation, the disruption was profound. Schools closed, interventions stopped and TAP’s existing delivery model was no longer possible. But the crisis forced the organisation to separate its mission from its model.
“COVID became our CTO,” Monica says.
TAP moved towards WhatsApp, gamified its experience and began experimenting with technology, AI and Behaviour Science. The disruption ultimately pushed the organisation towards the technology-enabled and AI-led model it is building today. The lesson, Monica says, was simple: remain deeply committed to the problem, but do not become emotionally attached to one way of solving it.
Individual Success To Systemic Change
Among the moments Monica considers most meaningful is when a state government adopts TAP’s programme into its curriculum.
For her, such adoption represents something bigger than recognition. It means the work has moved beyond the organisation itself and entered the system. “If TAP doesn’t exist tomorrow, but the learning continues because the government has taken ownership of it, then we have succeeded,” she says.
“I don’t want to build an organisation that the system needs forever. I want to help change the system.”
Her experiences at Harvard and through fellowships have reinforced this belief in collaboration. She went to Harvard University expecting solutions but returned understanding that while many problems are global, solutions often need to be deeply local.
Working alongside bureaucrats, policymakers, politicians, impact investors and practitioners showed her that deep problems are rarely solved by one organisation. They require people from different sectors and disciplines bringing different perspectives to the same challenge.
Harvard also taught her to diagnose problems more carefully, question assumptions and distinguish between symptoms and systems. Perhaps most importantly, it gave her permission to say, “I don’t know.” For Monica, not knowing is not a weakness if one is willing to learn, experiment and keep moving.
Putting Agency At The Centre
If Monica could change one thing about Indian classrooms, she would put agency at the centre of education.
She wants children to have more opportunities to choose, question, create, disagree, experiment and solve, including problems that do not have a single correct answer.
This is where project-based learning becomes particularly powerful. Instead of simply reading about a problem, a child can investigate it, gather information, build something, test it, fail and try again.
“It moves education from ‘Tell me what the right answer is’ to ‘Help me understand how I can figure this out,'” Monica says.
She believes this matters beyond preparing children for the workforce. Today’s students will eventually vote, build businesses, lead organisations, work in government, create technology and shape communities.
“I want them to leave school believing that they have a role in shaping that future, not simply living in the one we hand them.”
Technology As An Enabler
TAP’s approach to technology follows the same principle: technology should serve the child, not replace their agency. “We have always treated technology as an enabler, not the intervention,” Monica says. The organisation started with WhatsApp because children and parents were already comfortable using it. TAP did not want to create another app, login or learning curve.
Its experience combines games, badges, leaderboards and projects, with content delivered in children’s learning languages and voice support to reduce barriers.
The biggest opportunity, Monica believes, lies in personalisation. A child who is already strong at coding or art should not remain stuck with beginner-level content, while a child who needs more support should be able to receive it. AI, she says, can help make this kind of personalised learning available to more children.
But the child remains at the centre. “Technology should expand a child’s choices and opportunities, not replace their agency.” Safety, security and wellbeing, she adds, have to remain non-negotiable.
The India She Hopes To Build
What gives Monica hope about India’s next generation is seeing children increasingly willing to question, express themselves and participate in shaping the world around them.
She has seen children investigate problems in their communities, build solutions, question adults when they have evidence to support their views and take financial literacy lessons home to their parents.
“I don’t think children need us to give them ambition or potential. They already have those things. The question is whether we give them enough opportunities to exercise them,” she says.
Her advice to professionals considering a move from corporate careers into social impact is similarly practical. She believes the decision should be purposeful but realistic, acknowledging that moving into the nonprofit sector can involve financial trade-offs, while also noting that the sector is evolving.
More importantly, she says people should not enter social impact simply because they want to “do good”. They should come because they want to solve a problem.
“The sector needs technologists, finance professionals, HR leaders, marketers, researchers, designers, strategists, operators and entrepreneurs,” she says. For those hesitant about making a full-time switch, she recommends starting small through volunteering, internships, or consulting.
Ultimately, Monica’s vision for the next 20 years is a less unequal India where circumstances of birth do not determine the size of a child’s ambition.
She imagines children growing up learning not only mathematics and language, but also how to understand their emotions, manage money, use technology and AI, think scientifically, collaborate and solve real problems.
“If we can create that generation, I think they will build an India that is far more equal, innovative, creative and confident than anything we could design for them today.”
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Education is not only about preparing children to answer questions, but also giving them the confidence to ask their own. Monica Pesswani’s work highlights why agency, critical thinking and real-world learning need to become a meaningful part of every child’s education, regardless of the school they attend.
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