India’s data on child labourers of the age group 5-14 is alarming (government sets figure at 20 million while external agencies claims it is more than 50 million). These figures are among the highest in the world. About 54 percent of these children are in rural India working as agricultural labourers. 18 percent are working in households, 15 percent in construction works, 5 percent in manufacturing like factory workers and about 8 percent are scattered across various fields.

Child labour has always been for ASSIST one of the vital elements to be tackled among the rural villages of Andhra Pradesh. ASSIST concentrates on children within ethnic groups who are in greatest need and designs programmes to reduce the barriers they can meet. In order to do that we concentrate on the following actions:

• Rehabilitating working children


• Increasing the enrolment and retention rates of school age children


• Creating understanding and demand for education


• Preventing children from working or from dropping out of school

• Awareness programmes among the target population


• Provision of infrastructures for school age children (Residential and Non-Residential Transitional Education Centres, Child Care Centres, Vocational Training courses)


• Ensuring that People’s Organisations are taking responsibility to arrest child labour in their respective communities