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Better schools: Better equipment.

The volunteers are linked through a global, online fundraising campaign called Work an Hour (WAH) where participants symbolically donate an hour’s worth or more of their salary.

Orchestrated by Asha for Education, a global non-profit organisation dedicated to the education of underprivileged children in India, this year’s event began on July 4 and concluded on September 5 — Teachers’ Day. As of date, the campaign has garnered $45,462 from 453 people around the world.

Asha for Education was started by V. J. P. Srivatsava, Deepak Gupta and Sandeep Pandey while they were students at the University of California, Berkeley, U.S., in 1991.

The first WAH campaign started in 1998 with some 700 donors collecting over $30,000. This year’s campaign is themed: “Better Schools. Better Retention Rates. Decreased Child Labour.”

To commemorate WAH’s tenth year of fundraising, Asha for Education is highlighting 11 projects focusing on children of sex workers, agricultural child labourers, abandoned and destitute children and children of migratory workers.

One requirement is that ASHA volunteers must visit a project site before funding, and thereafter, a steward will communicate with local directors and provide support for the various education

initiatives.

Child labour has reached epidemic numbers in India with statistics varying from 12 million to over 40 million child workers. According to UNICEF, India has the world’s largest number of child labourers under the age of 14.

Additionally, according to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyana the Indian government’s Education for All flagship programme, only 47 out of 100 children in India enrolled in class I reach class VIII, putting the dropout rate at almost 53 per cent.

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