For children of seasonal labor migrants, school is only in session during the parts of the year when their parents are not working in another part of their country. To help children stay in school and their communities, Lokadrusti, an Indian non-governmental organisation (NGO) partnered with the state government in Odisha, India to create children-only hostels that worked closely with schools.

Seasonal hostels provide migrant children with a safe and secure place of residence so that they can continue schooling in a safe environment. These children, who would otherwise migrate with their families, stay in the hostels and attend school for the entire duration of migration. When their parents return, they go back to live with their families.

The seasonal hostel initiative in Odisha brings three critical stakeholders together, the Odisha State Government, local communities, and civil society, to meet a community need by running 241 seasonal hostels spread across four districts in the state. The effort is funded by foundations in cooperation with the American India Foundation.

Seasonal hostels address the critical issue of access to education among these marginalised communities that often have low incomes and low rates of completing primary education. The valuable option of staying in the seasonal hostels enables children to successfully complete elementary education, and often go beyond that.

On the local level, they enhance positive engagement of local communities, School Management Committees and local governance bodies with schools and the public education system. In the longer term, such initiatives help in building an atmosphere of that prioritises the importance of education for personal and collective development.

Odisha is one of the many states in India where rural communities pursue seasonal migration due to a lack of local employment options. While an official number of seasonal migrants is not available, a conservative estimate suggests that in India around 70-100 million people undertake seasonal migration every year and out of these about 15-20 million are children.

Children who stop going to school due to labor migration are less likely than those who do not migrate to return to school, creating future generations who have not completed primary education. Universal access to primary school education is a Millennium Development Goal because it is recognised that access to education is crucial for people to be able to get out of poverty.

A student at one of the hostels, Sunita Koli, says, “Now that I’m about to join Class 11, I now understand the value of an education. No matter what anyone says, I am going to go to college and get a job that will help me, my family and my community to improve our lives.”

SInce 2004-2010 around 15,000 children lived in seasonal hostels, helping the children to continue their studies in their communities instead of following their parents for the average eight months that labor migrants are away from home. Studies are under way to assess how the students perform in school to determine how the hostels are impacting education for these vulnerable populations.

Learn more about the seasonal hostel program for migrant children here.

Photo credit:  American India Foundation