As a BIF Fellow this year, I have worked to establish educational centers in Delhi to help children of labor migrants acclimate to urban living. Urban Transition Centers (UTCs) aim to reintegrate children into mainstream education and improve participants’ socio-emotional health. The temporary nature of informal migrant labor forces families to frequently move residences, causing their children to experience high rates of absenteeism and dropouts from school. As first-generation learners, these children lack substantive educational support systems at home. They are also likely to struggle with poor socio-emotional health, cultural dissociation in new urban settings, and linguistic challenges.
While this isn’t an issue NGOs and government schemes neglect entirely, this population is uniquely challenging to locate and retain in programming. Migrants follow employment opportunities within the city, causing frequent relocation and impermanent living situations. This precarious residency makes the demographic difficult to locate and makes participation in educational initiatives temporary. These two factors make it challenging to make significant strides and even more complex to evaluate a project’s goals. Without endline data as evidence of progress, funding avenues for these projects are challenging to secure, exacerbating a cycle of inadequate intervention. Migrants from rural areas are also likely to be unregistered in federal identification schemes, creating additional barriers to educational access. While government schools are technically required to accept students regardless of documentation status (National Education Policy 2020), this process is rarely straightforward. This added barrier can be a significant deterrent for already unmotivated families.
Throughout the year, I have connected with dozens of experienced organizations to learn about their work and what challenges to expect during project implementation. Building these partnerships has offered valuable insight into launching educational interventions and working with migrant slum-dwelling children. This blog outlines the most relevant projects I’ve encountered that have shaped my understanding of this issue. While NGOs and government schemes have interventions to address the educational challenges facing urban migrant children, this blog focuses on NGO programs that more closely resemble UTCs and have provided relevant support.
Bal Raksha Bharat (BRB) – Save the Children
Bal Raksha Bharat, or Save the Children, is a large NGO with impactful educational programming nationwide. Room To Grow is an educational initiative working with children of migrants in Delhi. Through Room To Grow, Save the Children has created the Multi Activity Centre (MAC) model, a one-stop solution to address numerous challenges facing at-risk children of multiple ages. With children 3-6 years old, MACs aim to get children school-ready. With students 6-14 years old, MACs aim to engage never-enrolled and dropout students to continue their education and avoid child labor and street dwelling.
I had the opportunity to visit BRB’s MAC in Gurugram, Haryana, just outside of New Delhi. The center was a diverse educational support hub that provided students with various beneficial programs at different educational levels. Aside from the facilitation skills I gained interacting with students in the center, the experience was necessary to understand how to choose locations for implementation and the practices required to engage with communities during a center’s inception effectively. Through this experience, I met many educators and administrators who shared vital resources, such as survey material, academic evaluations, and facility checklists for educational centers. These learning experiences have contributed significantly to my UTC implementation framework.
I also had the opportunity to visit two BRB programs in Assam with the BIF cohort during our Midpoint conference in Guwahati.
Learning Initiatives For India (LIFI)
LIFI is a young organization working to increase out-of-school students’ access to mainstream education in Delhi, Haryana, Bihar, Gujarat, and MP. Through their innovative teacher fellowship program, LeAD UR India Fellowship, LIFI trains highly motivated individuals to provide excellent learning opportunities for children. This fellowship highlights LIFI’s priority in providing quality, long-lasting educational programming for its participants through developing like-minded teachers committed to the same goal. Unlike other organizations working with migrant students, LIFI works with families to continue education in source villages through communication with source schools and partner NGOs in the area. LIFI is in the process of developing a phone application that makes this communication seamless and more effective.
I visited LIFI’s programming at their CYRC (Children and Youth Resource Centre) in Nandoni, Delhi. These centers utilize LeAD UR India Fellows to teach in CYRCs, focusing on programming to equip students with tools to reintegrate into school systems. These centers provide holistic student development, focusing on remedial education, digital literacy, and STEM skill building. During my visit, I spoke with mothers about why they migrated to Delhi, what they hope their children will gain from these centers, and led activities with students. These conversations were highly informative and helped me understand the target population UTCs aim to benefit. By speaking with the parents and students at this center, I could ground the UTC project in the community it seeks to serve.
Learning by Locals (LBL)
Learning by Locals is an NGO based in Okhla, New Delhi. LBL aims to educate and empower youth by helping develop personal and professional skills and providing students with opportunities to achieve their goals. LBL programming is supplemental to school education and offers academic support and extracurricular activities for social growth and skill building. These activities include dance, theater, filmmaking, ultimate frisbee, and more. LBL also works with students to increase English proficiency through library and foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) classes.
When visiting LBL, I met former students who have remained active in the community and now serve as volunteers. These LBL alumni lead programming, mentor students, and participate in extracurricular activities. The culture at LBL is uniquely tight-knit, friendly, and welcoming, and an inspiring environment that UTCs will aim to emulate.
After my first visit with LBL’s FLN and library programs, I have returned to participate in their ultimate frisbee practices many times and built significant relationships with students and facilitators. The unique benefits of sports programming are extraordinary to watch. Sports support students’ physical health while teaching accountability, self-discipline, and camaraderie. While it’s unlikely UTCs will be able to provide such breadth in extracurricular opportunities, a takeaway from LBL has been the importance of community building in educational programming and the power of engaged and passionate leadership.
DoorStep School Foundation (DSSF)
DSSF is a Pune and Mumbai-based NGO working to bridge educational gaps for migrant and dropout children, focusing on urban and semi-urban slum communities. Their innovative programming, designed to target migrant and moving children, is relevant for UTCs despite being in a different city. Over two days with DSSF, I visited three different programs, met with organizational leaders, and participated in an annual exhibition on parent engagement.
I visited their School on Wheels initiative, providing migrant slum-dwelling children with multi-hour educational programming on a converted school bus. By bringing the centers directly to students, this program is too convenient for families and students to avoid making it highly participatory and successful. While UTCs won’t be able to mimic this program exactly, this mobile model is an innovative strategy that UTCs plan to adapt, and a model I have found alternative methods for adaptation. I also visited DSSF’s construction site school and the slum community learning center. These experiences provided a framework for this work in a different setting within a smaller ecosystem. Above all, I learned the importance of building a network of partners working within the same demographic. DSSF has an intimate understanding of the migrant population landscape in Pune and relies on this information to target and serve the community accurately.
Ektara Kolkata
Ektara is a Kolkata-based NGO working to provide holistic educational opportunities for girls and young women in Kolkata. The Ektara Learning Centers (ELCs) model works in slum communities with limited access to education to improve access to academic opportunities and improve literacy. Ektara works specifically in notoriously crime-ridden areas, fighting to keep children out of trafficking, drug peddling, and forced begging.
Chakke Pe Kaksha is a project in partnership with the Belgian organization, Mobile School. The project works to reach migrant children and children in slums, streets, and other marginalized areas of Kolkata. The program provides quality learning resources at the primary level using Mobile School’s extendable six-meter-long, two-sided blackboard on wheels. The interactive learning experience includes 364 panels on various subjects to promote skills-building and empowerment for young school goers. Ektara uses mobile schools in multiple locations around Kolkata, both as an outreach tool to target slum community children and as an educational resource, while stationed inside partnered government schools. This dual approach is an incredible framework for UTCs to adopt.
