Education Scholarships for Child Laborers in India

With your generous support, Lotus Outreach was able to provide educational scholarships to 250 children living and working in Mewat, Haryana’s brick kilns from July-December 2012. In addition to providing enrollment assistance and daily bus service to ensure the children safely reach school each day, the program...

The monsoon season is coming to a close in India, and poor migrant families from neighboring states have started their long treks in search of work in Mewat’s many brick kilns. Just these past few weeks, the Child Laborers Scholarship project has successfully enrolled 150 new arrivals into the program, the vast...

Ten year-old Munni’s story is typical of the hundreds of children that benefit from the Education Scholarships for Child Laborers project in rural Haryana, India. Last October, Munni migrated with her parents and two siblings to Mewat’s brick kilns from West Bengal, a poor state in eastern India. Before coming...

The migrants who come to work in Mewat’s brick kilns typically represent the most marginalized peoples in India: they are poor, landless, illiterate and often members of scheduled castes and tribes.  India has long been dedicated to narrowing the socio-economic gap between castes, and its constitution even...

We recently visited one of Mewat's brick kilns, called Lakhan, where 54 of 300 children of illiterate brick kiln migrants benefit from bus services that ensure their right to education. The fine tape of bitumen we are traveling is bordered by a thin line of gum trees that gives way to endless fields of wheat and mustard,...

Dear friends,We would like to sincerely thank you for investing in the Education Scholarships for Child Laborers project.  With your generous support, we will continue to provide 300 returning migrant children and first-generation learners with school supplies and a safe ride to the classroom each day, freeing them...

On December 7 we distributed sweaters to keep 56 brick kiln bus riders warm from the morning chill on their way to primary school in Bhanguri village of Hathin block. While uniforms are now provided by the government (thanks to our local partner’s legal advocacy in the area) we provide these children with school bags,...

Migrant laborers have begun trickling back to the brick kilns of Mewat, Haryana state, from their homes in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh. Visiting on October 19, we found the family of Rameshwar and Anguri Devi was among the first to arrive after the kilns' closure for the summer monsoons. We were happy to see that...

Our campaign in Mewat, Haryana has awakened brick kiln laborers as well as teachers and authorities to children’s right to education and the laws that support it. When we started our advocacy four years ago, almost everyone simply ignored the fact that local school-age children were living as laborers. Local schools...

The family featured in these pictures and video migrated to Mewat's brick kilns from the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, where they typically return each year during the rainy season. This year is different; with five of their eight children attending school regularly thanks to our buses, parents Ram Das and Malma Devi...

Migrant laborer Sukhpal has come to work in the brick kilns of Mewat from Uttar Pradesh for each of the last 12 years. His eldest daughter is married, but two of his younger children accompany him on his annual journey to Mewat. When Lotus Outreach officers approached him about enrolling his children, Sukhpal had mixed...

The last thing Khatuni expected after migrating from her home state of Assam to work in a brick kiln was to be visited by an NGO with uniforms and school supplies for her children. But last fall when officers from Lotus Outreach did just that, she didn’t hesitate to send her three school-aged kids to local schools in...

Last month, Asma and her husband Jamil arrived in Mewat, Haryana  from West Bengal – over 900 miles away – to work in the area’s brick kiln factories.  Returning home only when the factories close during Mewat’s monsoon season, the couple brings their three daughters to labor at their...

“My name is Geeta and I have three children, Madhuri (8), Madhu (6) and Ajit (5). All three are now going to Malhokhra Primary School in Mewat, India. My family migrated here from Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh to Malokhra village in Hathin to work at local brick kilns, as we do not get regular work at home. We all work...

Please find a brief overview of project activities in 2009. We will also continue to provide scholarship support to these 715 kids, so please consider making a donation again in 2010! Warm regards, Erika

There is really no way to put a value on the education of a child that would have never spent a day in school unless we had helped them to do so. Lotus Outreach would like to share that sense of achievement with the hundreds of donors who contributed to our GlobalGiving challenge last year, putting 715 children of migrant...

Greetings! Please download the attached newsletter to read an article on the latest developments in the scholarship program for child laborers in Mewat (page 2). If you have not already done so, we encourage you to subscribe to our monthly newsletter at www.lotusoutreach.org. Alternatively, you can send an email to...

Dear friends of Lotus Outreach, In just 30 days, you helped us raise over $27,000, earn a permanent spot on GlobalGiving.com and place first among 167 international organizations, earning us an additional $3,000 bonus grant directly from GlobalGiving! When we originally set out to raise $4,000 for 200 scholarships, we...

Dear friends of Lotus Outreach, The scholarship initiative in Mewat is already underway! Take a look at what we - together - have achieved in the past week alone: • 53 of the approximately 700 children benefiting from this initiative have already received their scholarship packages, enrolled in school and will...

Dear friends, The response to our GlobalGiving challenge has been incredible. In less than 30 days, we raised over $16,000 from 174 individuals and organizations – securing $4,400 in matching funds ($3,000 of which has already been contributed); fully funding our scholarship initiative for child laborers in Mewat; and...

Dear friends of Lotus Outreach, We have an incredible piece of news regarding the GlobalGiving campaign to send child laborers in rural India to school! An anonymous donor has pledged $4,400 in matching funds to increase the number of dollars and donors for this campaign so we can get closer to the GlobalGiving Open...

Dear friends of Lotus Outreach, You are AMAZING!!! In just one week, 78 generous supporters donated over $5,700, earning us a permanent spot on GlobalGiving.com while ensuring 250 Indian child laborers will start school next month! Because of the incredible success of this campaign, I contacted our Project Manager...