India

CRY America (Child Rights and You)

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Child Rights and You (previously known as Child Relief and You) is a non profit organization impacting countless children in both India and the United States. CRY America's mission is to create a world where all children have equal opportunities to develop to their full potential and realize their dreams.

With the high poverty levels in India, it is not uncommon that children are pulled out of school because parents can't find jobs that pay enough to support their family on their own, or girls are not able to attend school because there are no bathrooms. Generations of families are born into a "bonded labor" without any hope of rising above it and furthering their futures because of a lack of education.

CRY works to empower these families and individuals through education. By pushing for child education, CRY has influenced the lives of over 450,000 children.

We can make a change that will not only impact the current generation but generations to come as well.

For more information about CRY, please visit america.cry.org

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Akshaya Patra

Akshaya Patra is an NGO in India that provides food to children in order to promote education. Inspiration for Akshaya Patra came from a scene in everyday life: a group of children fighitng with street dogs over scraps of food. From this moment came the philosophy, "No child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger."

In India, because of the high poverty levels, it is common that children do not attend school because they don't have the time, as they are scrounging for food. However, Akshaya Patra works to prevent this issue, and in order to promote education started the "Mid-day Meal Scheme", which provided meals for children who attended school. What began as a simple way to increase child attendance in school, became a nationwide movement to promote education. One year later, the Indian Supreme Court issued an order that mandated all government and government-assisted schools to provide a hot meal to all children in attendance.

Currently, Akshaya Patra is impacting the lives of 1.3 million children everyday, and so can you.

For more information about Akshaya Patra, please visit akshayapatra.org

Ekal Vidyalaya

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Ekal Vidyalaya is a non-profit organization that operates the largest non-government education movement in the remote and tribal villages of India. While officially registered as a charitable organization in 1999, the work of Ekal Vidyalaya has been in effect since 1986.

In 1986, a group of educationists brought the concept of "Ekal Vidyalaya" or "one-teacher school" to the tribes of Gumla, Chhaisgarh (near Jharkand). In 1988, similar schools were established in sixty more villages near Dhanbad.

By 1995, 1200 one-teacher schools were established in Jharkand. One-teacher schools are a very basic, non formal school system, which emphasize reading, writing, and arithmetic. Because of this massive education movement, literacy rates for children more than doubled.

The organization's current goal is to raise the funds to build 100,000 non-formal schools across the tribal belt by 2015. With your help, we can help Ekal Vidyalaya achieve this goal.

For more information about Ekal Vidyalaya, please visit ekal.org