Rehabilitation and education
of street children

Empowering 11 million children on the streets of India with a home, an education, and a future

Children on the streets of India face unimaginable daily hardships: exposure to abuse, malnutrition, substance addiction, physical insecurity, and an inability to access basic human rights.

Despite India’s strong legal framework, including the Right to Education (RTE) Act, Juvenile Justice Act and the Scheme of Shelter for the Urban Homeless, implementation remains a challenge, and street children are routinely left out of systems designed to protect them.

At Sustain Labs Paris, we have been working on a transformative initiative to change this, with our Founder and CEO, Dr. Miniya Chatterji as an ambassador to Planète Enfants & Développement and member of the Advisory Council of the Adira Foundation.

Designed with deep community insight, support from governmental bodies, our aim is to implement a systemic model to provide street children with shelter, safety and access to quality education across India.

Explore the steps involved in how we are empowering children on the streets of India through our pilot in Maharashtra.

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In 2023, Sustain Labs sponsored a comprehensive research study in Mumbai, Maharashtra to uncover the lived experiences and barriers faced by street children.

Methodology:
Institutional analysis
Stakeholder consultations
Grassroots workshops

Key insights included a strong desire for personal space and privacy, the importance of sub-group dynamics and a need for tailored pedagogical approaches.

These insights informed the design of interventions around:
Education
Emotional support
Rehabilitation & boarding infrastructure

The study sponsored and undertaken by the Stargazers foundation resulted in the proposition of a multi-pronged model utilising existing government infrastructure, leveraging India’s policy frameworks, and ensuring child-led design for providing boarding facilities and education to children living on the streets in India.

Our recommendations:

Repurposing vacant government schools: Identifying underutilised schools in Maharashtra, Sustain Labs Paris developed architectural blueprints that preserve classroom space while introducing child-friendly cubicles, gender-responsive toilets, and dining halls.
Activating the RTE Act: Street children often lack legal documents and therefore this programme proposed afternoon shifts in surrounding schools with customised curricula, teacher training, and psycho-social modules to help children integrate into formal schooling.
PPP-based fund mobilisation: A policy recommendation was made to require large educational trusts to contribute 2% of revenue towards shelter and education for street children, creating a self-sustaining funding pool
Designing attractive shelters: To reduce drop-out rates, the boarding schools must be inviting and empowering and therefore we involved children in designing their living spaces.

The team will now implement the programme design for the rehabilitation and education, with the backing of the Government of Maharashtra, working with the Minister of Women and Child Development.

The success of this initiative lies in its multi-sectoral partnership approach. Sustain Labs Paris is currently engaging state departments, NGOs with proven child shelter models, legal experts to navigate identity and documentation gaps, architectures and designers for space planning refinement, teachers and school leaders for an inclusive pedagogy, and philanthropic foundations and corporate social responsibility arms to fund scale.

Whether you’re a policymaker, philanthropist, academic, NGO, or citizen - there is a role for you in giving India’s 11 million children a home and education.

To partner with us or support the children, please contact: sustain@labsparis.com

To contribute, you can do so here:

Rehabilitation and education of street children

Rehabilitation and education
of street children