Having launched two new schools in Pune and Thane in 2026, Christel House India is now in discussions to expand its presence in India in the coming decade.
Bengaluru, 22 September 2026: Christel House India (CH India), a non-profit that provides high-quality, holistic, completely free education and long-term support to children from severely under-resourced communities, is accelerating its expansion across India. Having launched two new schools in Pune and Thane in 2026 alone, CH India is now in discussions to add an additional school in the coming year, with plans for three more campuses over the next ten years across the country.
This is already underway at CH India’s founding campus in Bengaluru, which expanded capacity by 50% this past year, welcoming 70 new students each into Kindergarten and Grade 1 and raising per-grade strength from 70 to 105. This expansion is expected to impact nearly 1,400 children and families at full capacity.
What began as a single campus with 320 students has since grown into a network of four schools across Bengaluru, Atal Nagar (Raipur), Pune, and Thane. The organisation has served over 3,500 students since its founding in 2001, and has the ability to reach more than 7,000 students annually at full capacity. Much of this growth has been driven through public-private partnerships with local governments, including the Nava Raipur Atal Nagar Vikas Pradhikaran in Atal Nagar, the Pune Zilla Parishad in Pune, and the Thane Municipal Corporation in Thane, alongside corporate partners.
CH India celebrated these milestones at an event held at their founding campus in Bengaluru. The event brought together Global Christel House leadership and Board members (including Mr. David Harris, President and Global CEO, and Ms. Martha Lamkin, Chair of the Board), Mr. Rajeev Ram, six-time Grand Slam champion, Olympic medalist, and Global Ambassador – Christel House International, Alumni, students, and their family members.
CH India’s donor family who have been instrumental in this growth were also present at the event. They have stayed invested in CH India’s mission for years, in some cases since its earliest days. Their long-term contributions have funded academics as well as nutrition, healthcare, and counselling to keep children in school and on track. CH India notes that 100% of donations go directly toward student programmes and services, with administrative and fundraising costs borne separately by the organisation’s founder-led trust.
“For children growing up in poverty, education is often the most powerful pathway to break free from cycles of generational poverty. Once a child is educated, that impact does not stop with them; it carries forward to the next generation,” said Jaison C. Mathew, CEO, Christel House India. “Twenty-five years ago, we began with one school and a belief that every child deserves the opportunity to realise their full potential. Today, that belief is what is driving us to reach even more children, even faster.”
This growth builds on a foundation of outcomes CH India has spent two decades establishing. Over the past two and a half decades, CHI’s Bengaluru campus has achieved a 100% Grade 12 pass rate for eight consecutive years, and 99% of its graduates are currently pursuing higher education, employed, or both. An independent impact assessment by Deloitte found that CH India graduates earn 72% more than the Karnataka state per capita average and contribute 73% of their household income, outcomes CH India describes as a multiplying impact that extends the benefit of one child’s education across generations. It is this track record that CH India is now working to replicate at scale, as it takes its models to more communities across the country.
David Harris, President and CEO, Christel House International, added, “Expanding access to quality education for children in under-resourced communities in Urban and Rural settlements is essential to building an inclusive and progressive global community. Education continues to remain one of the most powerful tools for social transformation, and India is one of the clearest examples of what happens when a model like ours is given time to mature. One school became four in twenty-five years, reaching over 3,500 children along the way. That is the result of having a team that has stayed focused and disciplined about outcomes since day one.”
Marking the milestone from within its own alumni community is Shiva Sagar R., part of CH India’s first graduating cohort from the Bengaluru campus. After graduating, Shiva pursued a career in engineering before returning to CH India, where he taught for several years and grew into leadership roles, and now serves as Principal of its Pune campus. “Coming back to Christel House, this time as Principal, is not something I imagined when I was a student here. But everything I know about education, patience, and what it takes for a child to succeed, I learned first as a student in this very building,” he said.
“Twenty-five years in, our work is far from done,” added Mathew. “Every new school, and every additional seat in an existing one, is another child who gets the chance to change the course of their family’s future.”
CH India’s education model is built on the belief that breaking the cycle of poverty requires more than access to school alone. The organisation’s “whole-child” approach integrates quality English-medium education, daily nutrition, healthcare, safe transportation, socio-emotional counselling, character development, and college and career guidance- support that follows each child from kindergarten through their early career, a journey that can span 18 years or more per student. All of this, along with uniforms, learning materials, and post-secondary scholarships, is provided entirely free of cost, with admissions based on evidence of poverty rather than academic merit.