WAH 2007 - Help Educate India's Children

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Help Educate India's Children

Asha for Education, a global non-profit organization dedicated to the education of underprivileged children in India, launched its 10th annual Work An Hour (WAH) online campaign on July 4, 2007. This year's campaign will help support 11 projects that focus on bringing basic education to neglected communities across India while simultaneously addressing the issue of child labor.

The Work an Hour theme for 2007 - "Better Schools. Better Retention Rates. Decreased Child Labor." – was chosen to address India's burgeoning child labor and school dropout problem. Child labor has reached epidemic numbers in India with statistics varying from 12 million to over 40 million child laborers in the country. According to UNICEF, India has the world's largest number of child laborers under the age of 14. In addition, according to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyana, the Indian government's Educational for All Movement, only 47 out of 100 children in India enrolled in class I reach class VIII, putting the dropout rate at almost 53%.

The 11 projects chosen for this year's WAH campaign represent various grassroots initiatives that focus on different target groups for school retention rates: children of sex workers, agricultural child laborers, abandoned and destitute children, and children of migratory workers. Projects are detailed on WAH's website at http://www.workanhour.com.

WAH is a global fundraising campaign based on a simple concept. Participants are asked to symbolically Work An Hour towards the cause of children's education by donating an hour's worth or more of their salary. The campaign begins on July 4 and concludes on September 5, which is celebrated as Teachers' Day in India.

To donate or find out more information, go to http://www.workanhour.com.