India
Caring for orphaned and vulnerable children in India since 1979 through child sponsorship and donations
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Every year, sponsors and donors provide direct life-changing support for over 16,700 children and families in India.
Despite significant progress, India today remains home to tens of millions of people living below the poverty line. Malnutrition among children under age 5 continues to be a major health concern, and the nation has one of the highest rates of out-of-school children in the world — the vast majority of them girls. Families living in poverty have few social services available to them, and many struggling parents — particularly single mothers who face social stigma — feel they have no choice but to relinquish their children to orphanage care. Working alongside our local partners and with the support of sponsors and donors, Holt works to ensure that children living in India have what they need to grow and thrive in a loving family.
40% of girls ages 15-18 are out of school
Holt sponsors keep girls in school by providing everything from tuition, uniforms and supplies to the support of a dedicated advocate.
30 million children are growing up without families
Holt introduced foster care to India in 1982, creating a family-like care alternative for children living in orphanages.
India is home to 600 million internal migrants, including children
Holt’s donor-supported daycare program gives children of migrant workers a safe place to go while their parents work.
Help Children & Families in India
Irregular work, rising costs of living, and limited access to social services make it difficult for parents in India to meet their children’s basic needs. Your gift helps provide food, education, and income support so children can grow up safe, healthy and in the loving care of their family.
Family Strengthening
Child sponsorship helps children and families thrive in India.
Holt donors provide the vital support children and families need to grow healthy and strong, and ultimately escape the cycle of poverty. Many of our programs in India focus on empowering and educating young women and girls who face gender discrimination and exploitation.
Education
India has one of the highest rates of out-of-school children in the world. The vast majority of them are girls growing up in slum communities and rural areas where traditional gender roles continue to shape women’s lives. Once educated, however, women and girls have a unique capacity to create change — not just in their own lives, but in the lives of their families and communities.
Sponsors and donors provide educational sponsorship for children living in two states and through two long-time Holt partners in India. Holt’s legacy partner Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra (BSSK), in Pune, now provides foundational programs in math and literacy to young children to ensure they have the ability to read and write with understanding by age 9. BSSK also offers a library program called Kahaniyon ki Duniya, or World of Stories, that encourages children’s imagination and helps them discover their love of reading. In addition, BSSK offers science camps, instruction in health and sex education, career guidance to high school students and job readiness workshops for students pursuing a university education.
In Bangalore, Holt’s legacy partner Vathsalya Charitable Trust (VCT) also supports children from migrant and low-income families through their school years. Sponsored children receive tuition, uniforms, school supplies, and the ongoing support of a dedicated advocate who monitors their progress and helps them navigate challenges that might otherwise push them out of school. Some children in sponsorship are boys. Most are girls who would otherwise drop out of school early to help earn income for their family, take care of younger siblings or learn household duties before marrying at age 15 or 16. For these adolescent girls in particular, sustained support is critical — helping them stay enrolled through secondary school, avoid early marriage and build a foundation for an independent future.
Through Holt-supported education programs, children receive everything they need to attend school through the 12th grade. With donor support, many students in India are also able to pursue a university education – earning the degrees they need to become independent and pursue careers in everything from social work and education to medicine and engineering. Children and families are also supported with timely emergency and medical assistance when needed.
Early Childhood Care & Development
In recent years, India’s largest cities have seen a huge influx of families migrating from rural areas to find work in construction and other labor. Parents will sometimes leave older children with family members in the countryside, but often bring their youngest children with them to the city. The income migrant families earn is, however, barely enough to meet their children’s basic needs — much less afford the high cost of daycare or preschool. As a result, young children often stay with their parents while they work on construction sites or in other hazardous environments.
But in 2013, with the support of Holt sponsors and donors, our local partner in Bangalore, Vathsalya Charitable Trust (VCT), started a free child development center providing a safe place for children to go while their parents work during the day. But while VCT operates as a daycare, it’s more like a preschool or informal elementary school — providing children with a critical early education while they gain skills needed to transition to a more formal school setting. There’s a pre-nursery class for 3- and 4-year-olds, kindergarten for 4- and 5-year-olds, upper kindergarten for 5- and 6-year-olds and a special informal school for older children who are very behind academically, learning the local language and trying to catch up with their peers.
Another major benefit of the daycare program are the nourishing meals that each child receives. For many children living in migrant communities, each day brings the question of whether or not they will have enough to eat. But when they attend VCT’s child development center, they receive a variety of healthy foods to help them grow and thrive. Since opening, the center — now in several neighborhoods — has served nearly 17,000 children.
The VCT daycare program also provides inclusive care for children with medical or developmental needs — a population often excluded from mainstream daycare settings. For parents of these children, who may face additional barriers to employment, the program is a lifeline. Children receive appropriate stimulation, care and support within a safe environment, while their parents are able to work with the peace of mind that their child is in good hands.
Economic Empowerment
In the migrant communities of urban Bangalore —where poverty is one of the greatest causes of abandonment and family separation — sponsors and donors help keep children in the safe and loving care of their families. In these communities, our local partner, Vathsalya Charitable Trust (VCT), works with migrant families to help them develop a stable source of income — often through donor-funded technical education and training. Most families that receive these trainings are households headed by a single mother as these families are often most at risk in their community.
With the support of sponsors and donors, VCT’s Income Generation Program (IGP) equips single mothers and women from low-income households with the skills, networks and confidence to build sustainable livelihoods. Through tailored vocational training — including tailoring, small business management and financial literacy — women develop the economic independence that keeps their families together and their children in school. Monthly peer gatherings reinforce these skills and create lasting support networks among women who might otherwise navigate urban poverty in isolation. To date, more than 1,600 women have gone on to start their own businesses or enter stable employment as a result.
At the heart of VCT’s family strengthening model is a team of community workers who maintain regular contact with enrolled families through home visits and community meetings. These caseworkers identify families in crisis early, connect them to relevant services, and provide the consistent human relationship that helps parents feel supported rather than judged.
While empowering women to earn a stable income, economic empowerment and family strengthening support services ultimately help children remain in the loving care of their families, continue their education, and avoid early marriage and child labor.
Nutrition & Health
India has among the highest rates of children facing hunger and nutrition-related health problems in the developing world. But in the vulnerable communities where our partners work, Holt sponsors and donors are actively helping to reverse that trend. Through Holt’s innovative nutrition and health programs, children in Holt-supported programs in India receive targeted, multifaceted interventions to fight malnutrition and illnesses and address other urgent, health- and nutrition-related needs. These interventions include health screening, growth monitoring, maternal nutrition education and community referrals, in addition to the direct food support provided for children and families in Bangalore, Pune and surrounding areas.
Among the children in our partner VCT’s migrant daycare program in Bangalore, hunger is a daily concern. Families often subsist on little more than rice and for many children, the nutritious meals they receive each day at VCT are the only full meals they will eat all day. Breakfast often includes porridge, soup or fruit. For lunch, children are served a variety of foods like dal, curry, eggs and vegetables. VCT even has its own garden where children can learn how vegetables and herbs grow. All the meals at the center follow guidance from Holt’s Child Nutrition Program, which helps ensure children receive the balanced nutrition they need to grow. Menus rotate regularly so children experience a variety of foods — something most migrant families cannot provide at home.
In every region, families in crisis receive emergency food support. And all families receive a vital education on the importance of balanced nutrition to ensure children grow and develop to their full potential.
Since receiving Holt’s Child Nutrition Program trainings, our partner staff has also taken the initiative to share their learnings with parents they work with in rural communities. Through trainings, these parents have learned how to provide the nutrition their children need to maintain good health and succeed in school.
Orphan & Vulnerable Children Care
Child sponsorship provides care for India ’s most vulnerable children.
Since the late 1970s, Holt has worked alongside local partners in India to ensure the health and wellbeing of children living outside of family care. Today, sponsors and donors help children receive the highest quality care while they wait to rejoin their family or join an adoptive family.
Standards of Care
When Holt first came to India in the late 1970s, as many as 70 percent of children in India’s government-run institutions died before the age of 2. Through local partnerships, Holt worked alongside local child welfare experts to ensure children in care received the attention and nurturing care they needed, reducing infant mortality to almost zero at our partnering orphanages.
Today, Holt sponsors and donors continue to support vital care for children living at Bharatiya Samaj Seva Kendra (BSSK), Holt’s long-time partner in Pune. BSSK has its own neonatal intensive care unit, where at-risk infants receive nurturing, 24-hour care — significantly increasing their chances of survival. With support from sponsors and donors, BSSK consistently maintains a low ratio of caregivers to children, provides therapy programs to help children overcome delays and strengthen their skills, and has a Montessori school on site. Whenever possible, children stay in the loving care of a foster family but continue to visit BSSK for regular medical checkups and to ensure they are reaching critical milestones.
Nutrition & Health
Around the world, malnutrition and hunger-related illness remain among the biggest threats to children growing up in poverty — especially children growing up in orphanages without the love and care of a family. This is especially true in India, where rates of malnutrition in children younger than 5 remain among the highest in the world. Holt sponsors and donors help meet the nutritional needs of orphaned and vulnerable children in many of our partnering care programs, including children living in our partner child care centers in Pune. In Pune, they also help meet the nutritional needs of women experiencing unplanned pregnancy.
In 2012, Holt launched our Child Nutrition Program (CNP) and chose several partner care centers in India as initial sites to begin assessing children and identifying nutrition and feeding interventions. Through initial assessment, we discovered that a significant number of children suffered from iron-deficiency anemia — a common condition in India, where many children receive a primarily or completely vegetarian diet and the tradition of serving tea with meals makes it difficult to absorb needed iron.
Our CNP team recommended dietary and feeding changes, and follow-up screenings showed significant cuts in anemia rates as well as other nutrition-related health problems such as stunting and wasting. At one partner care center, anemia was completely eliminated.
Today, Holt sponsors and donors continue to help provide nutrition and medical care services for orphaned and vulnerable children in India and our partner staff and caregivers continue to use the feeding and nutrition practices they learned during CNP trainings. They continue to track the nutrition and growth of children in care — closely monitoring every child to ensure they are receiving the vital nutrition they need to thrive.