Independent Appeal: Education brings hope for child workers of India

When you see her sitting with the other children - her hair tied in ponytails and her face in a smile it is hard to believe 13-year-old Thenmozhi has not been a pupil since her youngest days. She is attentive, enthusiastic and clearly very bright.

And yet for many years, Thenmozhi was condemned to a life of labour and drudgery that few if any children in the West would recognise.

Five years ago both her parents were killed in a traffic accident and she came to this poor, desperate area of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, to live with her cousins. Already struggling themselves without the pressure of another mouth to feed, her relatives could not afford to send Thenmozhi to school. Instead she worked every day in the home, labouring from first light to darkness at the thousand and one tasks required by the family.

And then her cousins heard about the "transit school", a school that would take in the children of migrant families and other youngsters whose education had been disrupted. Best of all, the school did not charge a fee. "A friend told me that we could send her free of any charge," says Manikadan, who is Thenmozhi's cousin but in effect now her mother.

And so Thenmozhi was reborn as a child. While she still does some household tasks to help the family, the teenager now spends her days with other children playing and studying. "I like all subjects," she says.

The school which Thenmozhi attends in this dilapidated slum is run by Arundohaya, an organisation that operates similar projects across North Chennai in an effort to help children and save them from a life of child labour in an environment where any money earned no matter how tiny could make the difference between a family eating or going hungry. Arundohaya is a partner organisation of the International Children's Fund, one of the charities supported by The Independent Christmas appeal. "We have to change attitudes of parents and we have to do things to help [allow them to send their children to school]," says Virgil D'Sami, director of Arundohaya.

Ms D'Sami says that child labourers earn only a small amount of money, usually in bicycle shops or street-side eating stands or dhabbas. Often exploited by their employers, they earn just a few hundred rupees a month, barely five or six pounds. By setting up self-help groups, providing training in such skills as sewing and tailoring and helping organise micro-credit schemes, Arundohaya is able to help families provide an alternative income that allows them to send their children to school.

North Chennai, though located just a few miles from the south of the city, is a world removed from its more prosperous other half. A scarred landscape of acid factories and other heavy industries located alongside the sea, North Chennai is overwhelmingly poor. Laws passed by the Indian federal government forbid children below the age of 14 working in all but a handful of industries, but in this area the practice is still commonplace. And yet with limited resources, Arundohaya is making a difference; as well as its "migrant school", the charity operates a pre-school for the very young, offering children a hope that their parents never had.