Education Scholarships for Child Laborers in India

IN THE SWELTERING HEAT OF THE INDIAN SUN, brick kiln workers stand ragged, knee-deep in water, bent over and hacking out clay bricks from wet mud. Nearby, kindergarten-age children break apart coal lumps to be loaded into impossibly hot clay kilns. None of the conditions are legal, but they are the status quo for millions of workers indentured to labor almost as slaves.

Kamlesh is the mother of eight children working at such a facility in Hathin, Haryana. Living and working at a brick kiln has not afforded Kamlesh’s family the ability to send their children to school. As a result, her oldest children are mostly uneducated, and will likely repeat the same path of servitude which their parents were forced to pursue. Such is the cycle of poverty.

Lotus Outreach is working to break the cycle of poverty by facilitating the education of hundreds of children of laborers each year! Our students receive a free school uniform, school bags, books, stationery, a free lunch, and safe bus transportation to their local school.  

Transportation, Kamlesh tells us, was the main reason why her eldest children were unable to continue in education. Living at the brick kiln in a shack, the family was much too far from the district school, and the roads on which children must walk to get to school are full of peril. Huge trucks tear down the dirt roads, killing dozens of pedestrians each year. One crash last year killed 30 brick kiln workers, 12 of which were children, when the truck tore into the 2 minivans into which they were packed.

Kamlesh’s own first born son was killed in a road accident. Even if just transportation were not an issue, education would still be far out of reach. The cost of uniforms, materials, food, and the opportunity-cost of losing the pittance of income generated by their children’s labor makes so many families choose not to continue their children in school.

The supportive services of Lotus Outreach are changing all of that! Kamlesh’s three youngest children, two daughters and a son are now enrolled in primary school. She says, “I hope that my son can become a clerk and that my daughters will marry into a decent family, and not have to work from dawn until midnight at the kiln.”

Your donation can emancipate these children from a lifetime of hard labor! Just $40 covers the cost of safe, bus transportation for a student for the entire year!  

So far in this year we have 100 students enrolled and receiving scholarships and support. Some 30 families have already committed to stay in the area through the monsoon season, forgoing the meager temptation of more work in the south so that their children can remain consistently in school and receive the full benefit of the program. This choice would be impossible without the support this vital program.

In 2013 we provided services to 250 brick kiln kids, busing them to the schools, supporting them with materials and even extra tutoring, and persuading their migrant families to remain in one place so their children can pursue education. Escape from poverty without literacy, without basic numeracy is all but impossible. With your support we are paving the way for the next generation to succeed.

Links:

• Learn more about conditions at brick kilns in this BBC report!