Migrant Children Program

The program started as a result of Interlock’s support for victims of the Tsunami and is run together with RDT (Rural DevelopmentTrust), a local organisation that Interlock helped set up. The program focuses on providing education for the children of migrant workers and nomadic tribes that moves to and from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The tribes’ only source of income has been cleaning fishnets for generations and they used to move from village to village following the fishing season until the Tsunami disrupted their way of living in December 2004. The villages where the tribe used to work were destroyed and today these people are struggling to find new means of subsistence.
To ensure that the children can access basic educationand break the poverty cycle, Interlock and RDT have built six Day Care Centres in Tamil Nadu which offer one meal per day to each student. The children can attend school in each centre with minimal disruption in their classes. As the two states not only speak different languagesbut also use a different script, the teachers are teaching Tamil, Urdu and Telugu. This will allow these children to integrate better in both states and have better work opportunities in the future. The Tamil Nadu Child Development Department funds one meal per day per child and the wageof a helper for each centre.
RDT has also deepened 30 wells in villages that were in need of a better irrigation to improve crop production.
The photos below show our first classroom before opening the Day Care Centres, and the children in our centres. More photos can be found in the photo gallery.