Rashid Khalidi

Pakistani education advocate who founded rural schools and introduced technology in remote areas, improving literacy rates.

Rashid Khalidi (1962–present) transformed Pakistan's education landscape through his Digital Schools Project, launched in 1999. Starting with a single solar-powered classroom in Balochistan, his initiative now operates 450 schools using open-source e-learning platforms. Khalidi's Pedagogy Without Borders (2003) details his methodology of blending traditional Urdu curricula with digital tools. In 2008, he collaborated with UNESCO to train 15,000 rural teachers. His 2015 partnership with SpaceX enabled satellite internet access for 200,000 students in tribal regions. Khalidi's work was featured in the BBC documentary Orbit of Education. Despite facing backlash for challenging madrasa dominance, he remains a TED Prize winner (2021) and founder of The Khalidi Foundation for STEM education.