What is the Need?

FACT: In India, 90 million children younger than the age of 14 are working as common laborers or begging on the streets of large cities.

These children receive no education. Often they work in dangerous conditions or are mistreated by their employers. Some are orphans. Some have been abandoned by parents, and others are from families trapped in unemployment, illness, inadequate housing, and debt.

Their families live below subsistence level and therefore the children are required to earn a living at a very early age either through begging in the streets of big cities or in some trade where children are employed. In South India, for instance, match factories and fireworks manufacturing units employ children to overcome union problems. Working with hazardous material attracts union attention and regulations. Getting poor children to work is easy since they have no options — they either die of starvation or die of work-related accidents.

For these children, the future holds little hope…

A First Step The Avani Residential School

Avani is a residential school for children in Kolhapur District of Maharastra state. The school provides education and a home for children who would otherwise be locked into child labor and exploitation.

Avani is an Indian acronym for food, clothing, shelter.

The school with 30 children is currently operated from a small rented apartment which has one room, a kitchen and a sanitary block. It is grossly inadequate but because the organization is hamstrung for funds it cannot expand.

The good work of AVANI in Kolhapur India

In Kolhapur district, with a population of 2.5 million people, there are almost 60,000 very poor children with no hope for the future. The children admitted to Avani school were rescued from such jobs as manual laborers in brick kilns, farm laborers, rag-pickers and domestic servants. They come from generations of impoverished people who languish in poverty and ignorance, and are trapped in a vicious cycle of unemployment, underemployment, illness, inadequate housing and debt. Some of the children are orphans, some are abandoned and a few have their parents who have agreed to send their children to school although it hurts them financially.

There is another dilemma that needs to be considered. Picking poor children and giving them an education alienates them from their families. They are too ashamed to go back and live in poverty and squalor. In addition, regardless of the kind of conventional education they receive in regular schools, they still remain unqualified for higher education or for blue/white collar jobs. They migrate into cities and if they are lucky get a job as a clerk in a shop. Unemployment is rampant in India, and these handicapped children have to compete with the smarter city-educated youth for jobs. For the most part they languish at the bottom of the labor pool and out of frustration get into crime. Whether they get into a legitimate job or into crime they break away from the family because they don earn enough to pull the whole family out of poverty.