Bal Mitra Gram & Bal Mitra Mandal

Millions lost their livelihood opportunities during the pandemic, facing grave difficulties fending for their families. However, Covid also brought along with itself another major crisis for the country – a halt on education! As the pandemic started spreading and the country went into lockdown, educational institutions were shut down to prevent students from getting and spreading infection. Online classes started for children of private schools in urban areas, but a huge proportion of children living in the urban slums and rural areas of the country still remain deprived of education. Being out of school for months is not just leading to children losing interest in education but also making them more vulnerable to trafficking, child labour, and other forms of exploitation

Our aim is to connect children in rural and urban slum areas with education and provide them mid-day meals in the safety of their homes, so as to ensure that they are not just protected from the virus, but also from exploitation. For connecting them with education we plan to provide, mobile phones, tablet PCs and internet connectivity to children living in urban slums and rural India, who do not have an access to these facilities.

We want to ensure that such children who have stayed away from education due to lack of facilities during the COVID-19 period are able to get online education from the safety of their homes. This will prevent them from dropping out of school and falling into the trap of various forms of exploitation like child labour, child marriage, trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation and more.