Have you ever faced difficulty in accessing basic early child care, education & health services to your children if you had migrated within India?

Have you ever faced difficulty in accessing government entitlements if you had migrated within India?

We at Aide et Action ask you to take a minute to think of what such problems internal migrants are facing in our cities of India.

According to census 2011 internal migrants in India constitute a large population with 309 million internal migrants.  The internal migrants, especially seasonal and circular migrants, constitute a “floating” population, as they alternate between living at their source and destination locations, and in turn lose access to social protection benefits linked to the place of residence.

Migrants are looked upon as ‘outsiders’ by the local host administration, and as a burden on systems and resources at the destination. These migrants, mostly working in brick kilns and construction sites, live in a pathetic condition devoid of basic services.  Their children do not have access to Early Child Care and Education and basic health services and live in vulnerable and deplorable surroundings.

Women migrants, apart from discrimination, encountering difficulties peculiar to migrants, face gender-based violence; physical, sexual or psychological abuse, exploitation, and trafficking. In particular, women migrants’ economic contribution at the destination remains unacknowledged, despite the fact that they shoulder the double burden of livelihood (often engaged as unregistered, unpaid and therefore invisible workers) and household work, in the absence of traditional family-based support systems.

Over the years, our interventions focusing internal migrants, have been successful in bringing positive transformation among the local administration, facility owners and government functionaries. The children are now able to access early child care services within the facilities through the Child Care & Learning Centres run by us. These centres have also indirectly empowered the women, through the mothers and adolescent girls committees, to know their basic rights, health and hygiene and so on.

They now actively take part in the holistic development process of their children and also have become capable of standing for their rights and entitlements. 

At Aide et Action we are touched by this to a great extent and are launching #MIGRANTWOMANWORKER.

The #MIGRANTWOMANWORKER campaign is a one month campaign specific to migrant women and girl children. The campaign aims to provide a platform to showcase the transformation taking place in their lives, both at destination and source, through the intervention of Aide et Action.  The campaign will showcase the stories of change among the internal migrant women and girl children who are otherwise invisible.

 You can be part of this campaign by

• Donate for the cause of education of migrant population
• You can also volunteer to teach art, craft, math, yoga, and more.
• Click a  selfie with books in hand and post on our facebook page with the #iSupport #MIGRANTWOMANWORKER.