From Child Labour to College: Support Her Future

The Karuna Trust is working towards keeping 10,000 kids in education in the region of Sangamner, Maharashtra, India. One crucial aspect of achieving our goal is making sure that children’s learning environments are engaging as possible.

Traditional teaching styles in India often use out-dated rote learning methods. This style of teaching is boring and leaves many children struggling to keep up. Faced with an uninspiring class room experience and difficulty meeting grades, many children drop out of school to work in unskilled manual labour jobs.

Modern teaching techniques take advantage of participative and engaging classroom methods. Children are inspired to learn and as a result gain better grades. As part of the project we train hundreds of pre and primary school teachers in participative classroom practices that keep children engaged and interested.

Here you will find some of the pictures from our latest teacher training day.

Karuna works to get 10,000 kids into education in Mahrashtra, India. Vital to our goal is that all sections of the villages we work in are behind the education of their children. This includes parents, teachers, village elders and government officials. Often children are taken from school as a result of financial pressure felt by parents. It costs money to send a child to school. There is also the lost income a child would have earned had they been working.

Karuna and our project partners have addressed this issue by giving the communities they work in new skills to gain safe employment. The project leaders run 200 women's Self Help Group's in which members are taught skills to secure better paid alternative employment. Skills learnt include sewing, basic banking and financial skills and running a small business. The self help groups also run a savings and loan scheme for group members. In the last 6 months of the project 144 loans have been given for alternative employment purposes to group members.

With the money gained from the wages earned, families can afford to keep their children out of menial labour and in school.