Education
Live Projects
Access To Education - Seasonal Migrants
Cohesion Trust: (2005) Kutch, Gujarat($ 22,772) for one year
The NGO Cohesion Trust was setup in 1996. It aimed at providing support to other organizations in project finance and management services, including planning, monitoring, and evaluations. The need to work for the education of marginalized communities was seen by the group of professionals at Cohesion Trust, as a long term solution to the systemic exploitation that the migrant population of marine salt pan workers had been facing over the years. The program supported by AIF, aims at working for universalisation of elementary education of the children of the migrant population in the marine saltpans of Kutch district of Gujarat. The laborers migrate with all their family members including children to the saltpans, and stay there from October-November to June-July every year. Thus, children are deprived of opportunities of school education. The present program is an attempt to move towards universalisation of elementary education for children of these migrant salt workers of the age group of 6-14 years, in the 15 project villages of Rapar and Bhachau talukas(blocks) of Kutch district in Gujarat. Salt workers belong largely to the Koli community, which is extremely deprived. Due to migration into the salt pan areas, they can’t avail of any support from the government welfare schemes, which is available only in the village. As part of the overall strategy, Cohesion is currently running seasonal hostels in the sending areas, and there are 120 children in the 7 hostels.