India

Education

India has one of the highest rates of out-of-school children in the world. The vast majority of them are girls growing up in slum communities and rural areas where traditional gender roles continue to shape women’s lives. Once educated, however, women and girls have a unique capacity to create change. Not just in their own lives, but in the lives of their families and communities. 

Sponsors and donors provide educational sponsorship for children living in three states and through three long-time Holt partners in India. Some children in sponsorship are boys. Most are girls who would otherwise drop out of school early to help earn income for their family, take care of younger siblings or learn household duties before marrying at age 15 or 16.

Early Childhood Care & Development

In recent years, India’s largest cities have seen a huge influx of families migrating from rural areas to find work in construction and other labor. Parents will sometimes leave older children with family members in the countryside, but often bring their youngest children with them to the city. The income migrant families earn is, however, barely enough to meet their children’s basic needs — much less afford the high cost of daycare or preschool. As a result, young children often stay with their parents while they work on construction sites or in other hazardous environments.

In Bengaluru, Holt sponsors and donors help support a free daycare program that provides a safe place for children of migrant workers to go during the day.  Here, children receive a nourishing lunch and a critical early education, while they gain skills needed to transition to a more formal school setting. The migrant daycare program also helps prevent families from separating from one another due to the stresses of rural-to-urban migration. 

The daycare program also serves children with medical or developmental needs, whose parents often struggle to find suitable daycare that meets their children’s needs.

Economic Empowerment

In the migrant communities of urban Bengaluru, sponsors and donors help keep children in the safe and loving care of their families. Poverty is the greatest cause of abandonment and family separation in these communities. Our local partner, Vathsalya Charitable Trust (VCT), works with migrant families to help them develop a stable source of income — often through donor-funded microloans they can use to start a small business. 

Most families that receive microloans are households headed by a single mother as these families are often most at risk in their community. During monthly meetings with VCT staff, the women receive trainings to help them develop their entrepreneurial skills. They also learn about issues critical to the growth and development of their children, including proper nutrition and the importance of education. This vital program ultimately helps children remain in the loving care of their families, continue their education and avoid early marriage and child labor.

Kinship & Foster Care

Holt’s kinship and foster care programs provide nurturing, family-like care for children who would otherwise live in institutions. In India, Holt’s kinship care and relational engagement program began in 2016 and focuses on orphaned children ages 5-15 who are living with extended family or living with just one parent — often a widowed mother — in some of the most impoverished slums of Delhi. But as many families are living in poverty, sponsors are critical to this program. The monthly support they provide helps children thrive in the loving care of their relatives, covering everything from school fees and supplies to clothing, nutrition and medical care.

In another region of India, Holt sponsors and donors also support a foster care program for children who are waiting to reunite with their families or join families through adoption. For children growing up apart from their families, studies have shown that the one-on-one attention of a dedicated caregiver is absolutely essential to their healthy growth and development. Holt has through the years developed model foster care programs in many of the countries where we work.

As this program is so long established, children often stay in the care of foster families who have fostered upwards of 80-100 children over the course of 15-20 years. Children in foster care also receive physical, speech and/or play therapy through BSSK, which directly oversees the program. With the generous support of sponsors and donors, BSSK social workers regularly visit the children to assess their development and ensure they are receiving everything they need to thrive while they wait for a permanent, loving family.

Standards of Care

When Holt first came to India in the late 1970s, as many as 70 percent of children in India’s government-run institutions died before the age of 2. Through local partnerships, Holt worked alongside local child welfare experts to ensure children in care received the attention and nurturing care they needed, reducing infant mortality to almost zero at our partnering orphanages.

Today, Holt sponsors and donors continue to support vital care for children living at Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra (BSSK), Holt’s long-time partner in Pune. BSSK has its own neonatal intensive care unit, where at-risk infants receive nurturing, 24-hour care — significantly increasing their chances of survival. With support from sponsors and donors, BSSK consistently maintains a low ratio of caregivers to children, provides therapy programs to help children overcome delays and strengthen their skills, and has a Montessori school on site. Whenever possible, children stay in the loving care of a foster family but continue to visit BSSK for regular medical checkups and to ensure they are reaching critical milestones.