AIF is proud to announce that in November 2025, HundrED, a global organization that identifies and elevates the world’s most effective education innovations, named AIF’s Learning and Migration Program (LAMP), one of the 100 most impactful and scalable education innovations worldwide in its 2026 Global Collection. Every year, HundrED selects and showcases 100 such noteworthy education innovations from around the world. This year, the Global Collection features innovations from 53 countries, selected from more than 3,000 in the HundrED database.
From the 700+ innovations submitted for the open call, the HundrED research team shortlisted 244, which were reviewed by 230 Academy Members (including youth aged 16+) and 15 Junior Academy Members (aged 12-15). In total, they conducted 4,135 reviews to make the final selection. The innovations are selected based on impact and scalability.
This honor reflects a simple truth: when communities are empowered to prioritize education, their children delight in the joy of uninterrupted learning.
What is LAMP?
One in every five children in India is a migrant. Every year, over 140 million Indians migrate seasonally for work, disrupting their children’s education and pushing many into labor, deepening the cycle of poverty. The Learning and Migration Program (LAMP) tackles this challenge by providing these children with access to quality education and working with the community and government systems to prevent learning loss due to migration. This ensures uninterrupted learning for migrant children, helping them stay in school and breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty.
LAMP’s Origins and Evolution
LAMP was launched in 2004, when knowledge of seasonal migration was limited and its disruptive impact on children had yet to be recognized. The seasonality of migration overlaps with the school academic year, intensifying the risk of dropouts for migrant children upon their return.
LAMP began with a few worksite schools (Sakkarshalas) that initially addressed the problem of enrolling unenrolled students at both the source and destination points. Worksite schools were formed where children could play, learn, and reclaim childhood while their parents worked in harsh conditions in salt pans, brick kilns, and sugarcane factories. In this phase, LAMP provided access to learning for 90,000 children while also realising the scale of the issue. Recognizing the complexities of the informal labor sector, frequent migration, and the lack of linkage to the formal education system, LAMP shifted its focus to retaining children in their home villages by creating community-based residential resources with extended family members and educating the families on other available resources, such as government-run seasonal hostels that provided a stable environment while parents migrated. Over time, long-term relationships forged between AIF and the government provided public funding to create, maintain, and expand infrastructure and resources related to teaching and learning, and keeping children in their source geographies.
To further address learning gaps, LAMP introduced the Learning Enrichment Program (LEP), focusing on foundational literacy and numeracy. LEP provides targeted support, leading to significant improvements in students’ academic performance and confidence. LAMP’s approach also evolved to integrate the community and encourage local stakeholders to take ownership of educational initiatives. This led to increased accountability, with communities actively participating in school governance and contributing resources to sustain the educational programs.
LAMP in practice
LAMP conducts migration surveys in selected geographies to identify children at risk of seasonal migration, based on the assumption that 70% of children can be retained for at least 3 years at the source point. Through a hub-and-spoke model, children receive grade-appropriate learning interventions in hub schools (grades 1–8). They are enrolled in the Learning Enrichment Program (LEP) held after school hours, while spoke schools focus on strengthening foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN). The Learning Resource Centre (LRC), established in dedicated spaces within hub schools, is designed using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles.
Convergence Groups (AWWs, ASHA workers, SMC members, PRI members, and village elders) play a crucial role in enrolling and retaining children, using Community Report Cards to track progress. LAMP also facilitates children’s access to government-supported hostels and other government-run schemes (KGBVs), easing the burden on caregivers. Through MOUs with district education programs, LAMP operates on two tracks – community mobilization and government system strengthening – with the goal to transition at least 60% of spoke school students into hub schools for sustained educational engagement.
LAMP’s Journey and Impact
In 2004, LAMP began in migration-prone communities in Gujarat and Maharashtra, aiming to prevent school dropouts among migrant children and encourage families to pursue livelihoods that kept children enrolled in school.
In 2008, LAMP evolved to operate solely in sending areas, piloted the LEP program, and expanded to include all children affected by migration in migration-prone geographies. In 2010, Learning Resource Centres (LRCs) were piloted in Gujarat, using a hub-and-spoke model to strengthen both classroom learning and community ecosystems. In 2019, AIF collaborated with state governments to provide technical assistance and embed ECE components in the program.
In 2021, when LAMP adopted a lifecycle approach through government partnerships, the focus shifted to systems strengthening and technology integration. By 2023, LAMP focused on climate-induced migration and socio-emotional learning, designing multilingual learning materials to bridge learning gaps for 1800 tribal children in Maharashtra.
Now operational in 17 states and 5,432 villages, LAMP has impacted over 1.59 million children, upgraded infrastructure for 158,183 students, trained 1,826 teachers, set up 27 LRCs, and empowered over 8,311 School Management Committee (SMC) members and 47,664 community leaders. The program has won national recognition, including Best CSR Program in Education (2024), 1st Prize at ICC Social Impact Summit (2025), and honors from the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and the Assam Minister of Education for its innovative last-mile government partnerships.
The Future of LAMP
Following the success of LAMP’s model at the source point, the program also recognized the need to implement it at the destination point, given emerging needs in the urban context of migrating workers. LAMP’s destination point model aims to help break language and cultural barriers in the new environment. Next steps for the program also include integrating technology more deeply into the LRC at the source point, such as through a Makerspace model, to cultivate a scientific temperament among the children.
