Over 43,500 children in rural migrating communities of India will benefit from the 4-year grant to AIF’s LAMP initiative.
The WestBridge Capital has announced a grant of $1 million to the American India Foundation to improve access to quality education for 43,500 children in India over a period of four years.
The partnership will enable the children from migrating communities in rural Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, to acquire quality learning and knowledge under AIF’s signature Learning and Migration Program (LAMP), thereby bridging the learning deficits and improving their capabilities in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The project will leverage government resources by working with anganwadis (government-run rural child care centers) to strengthen foundational learning and hand-hold public school teachers, said a statement by the AIF.
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The grant will also benefit 25,500 community members to reinforce their capacity building measures to monitor government-run hostels and look into school governance issues, thus meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Global Goal 4 of Quality education, and its corresponding target for India to reduce the percentage of out-of-school children, in the four Indian states.
“We are proud to support AIF’s LAMP program, which is focused on educating and supporting the children of migrant laborers in India. Providing an education to the children of migrant labor is critical to breaking these families from their multi-generational cycle of poverty,†said Sumir Chadha, Managing Director and co-founder of WestBridge Capital. “My field visits to AIF’s programs in India convinced me that they are doing a fantastic job on the ground.â€
AIF CEO Nishant Pandey said, “I am excited about the impact this funding is going to create on children’s education in some of the remotest rural communities in India, breaking the cycle of poverty and building a brighter future for them.â€
LAMP is focusing on 139 million people who migrate from remote villages in search of work for up to eight months, often uprooting entire families with children accompanying them, leaving behind their schools, friends and communities. The program seeks to promote universal education in migration-affected geographies, improving the quality of learning and school governance and has demonstrated significant success in keeping children in school and improving their grades.
WestBridge Capital is an investment firm, managing over $2.5 billion of capital, especially in India.
The American India Foundation, founded in 2001 at the initiative of President Bill Clinton following a request from Prime Minister Vajpayee, has impacted the lives of 5.6 million of India’s poor in 24 states.
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