Waterloo co-op students learn to see global challenges differently at InEd
Through its partnership with the University of Waterloo, the Inclusive Education Foundation immerses co-op students in a cross-cultural environment where they contribute to education projects while learning to navigate complex global challenges.
By: Matthew King
Inclusive Education Foundation (InEd) understands that some problems are too important to tackle alone. The non-profit brings in Waterloo co-op students to work on challenges that can help change a child's life.
In the Thailand-Myanmar border, education is not always accessible for every migrant child. InEd, with the support of co-op students, works to strengthen the capacity of teachers and schools within these communities. Often, the problems they encounter rarely have simple solutions.
That's why the co-op students' learning begins before they open a spreadsheet or join a project. It starts with understanding the people and communities InEd works with.
The experience in a multilingual and cross-cultural environment InEd offers goes beyond the workplace.
Their work with Waterloo co-op students has earned them the 2026 Employer Impact Award for Impact in Global Engagement.
Looking beyond the solution
InEd has welcomed Waterloo co-op students almost every term for nearly two years. The organization acts with intention in their approach to how students tackle their work.
Students' onboarding begins with meeting different teams and learning about the programs. The aim is to understand the broader context of its work.
Students visit communities and meet the people who benefit from InEd’s programs.
“We don't want them to feel like they can help everyone,” says Greg Tyrosvoutis (BASc, ’08), Co-founder and Director of InEd.
“We want them to be realistic, reflect and focus on what they can do during their time.”
For students accustomed to approaching problems through a technical or academic lens, that can be a significant shift.
Greg Tyrosvoutis, Inclusive Education Foundation Co-Founder and Director
Electricial Engineering student, Shathviki Krishnaraj, arrived at InEd with an engineering mindset. She wanted to identify a problem and solve it.
Working with limited resources showed her how complex access to education can be. Families, government, politics and the environment all shape access to education in the region.
In Waterloo, and in engineering, it's very easy to think, ‘Oh, I need to fix this', but I realized that when you take time to understand the problem, the people that you're working with and not for, it's going to create a solution or a product that's far more meaningful to everyone involved.
Turning a global perspective into meaningful work
When InEd needed a better way to understand data from more than 4,000 teachers who had completed its professional development courses, Krishnaraj put her technical skills to work.
She worked with InEd’s project and monitoring and evaluation teams to develop a dashboard that processed and organized the data, making it easier to understand and use. She gathered feedback, refined the information and created a guide so the work could continue after her four-month term.
InEd co-op students celebrating Holi
InEd now uses the dashboard with donors and partners, while her guide has helped InEd staff continue working with the tool.
For Krishnaraj, the project demonstrated that meaningful technical work depends on understanding the people and purpose behind it.
“I think the definition of technical work looks different in different contexts,” she says. “It made me understand more about what meaningful work looks like based off of who you're working with and what the end goal is.”
That perspective is central to InEd’s approach to co-op students.
The organization teaches students to challenge their assumptions about what a community needs. They encourage them to work alongside different teams, ask questions and learn from a different perspective.
Students bring technical skills and new ideas, while InEd gives them the opportunity to apply those skills to challenges shaped by circumstances different from their own.
“We’re not just working with co-op students,” says Naing Win, Director of Education Programs at InEd.
“We’re working with potential future leaders.”
Tyrosvoutis describes the relationship as one of partnership. InEd has a learning mindset, and students bring perspectives that can help the organization recognize its own blind spots.
The result is an experience that extends beyond international work experience.
Naing Win, Inclusive Education Foundation Co-Founder and Migrant Education Program Director
Students leave with:
- A deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of global challenges,
- How to communicate across differences,
- Why effective solutions begin with listening.
For InEd, that is part of the impact of bringing Waterloo students into its work: they contribute to the organization while developing the perspective needed to become more thoughtful global collaborators.