KLM AirCares supports education project in India

During the second quarter of 2003, KLM AirCares will begin its support of an educational project initiated by Novib/Oxfam Netherlands on behalf of street children in India.

Novib is part of Oxfam International, a group of eleven development organizations with more than 3,000 partner organizations in a hundred countries around the world. Novib/Oxfam Netherlands will carry out the project together with its Indian partner organization Pratham.

In India, 40% of the children - 44 million in all - do not go to school for any number of reasons. This is one cause of the country's deep-seated poverty. The society's most vulnerable group is its children who live and work on the streets, often in the most dire circumstances. These children are hard to reach, and it is precisely for this reason that Novib/Oxfam Netherlands and Pratham are focusing part of their initiative on them.

Special action teams go out into the streets to make contact with children in the slums. The volunteers talk with them, play with them, and read to them. In this way, they work to build a sense of trust with the situation and their parents, and then motivate them to go to school. After about a month, the children can enter into intensive study which will prepare them for normal schooling. An intensive class for twenty children costs only € 276.

Unfortunately, millions of children are still out of reach and money is badly needed to further expand this highly effective program.

AirCares is KLM's charitable sponsoring program. Every year, KLM AirCares sponsors four different charitable organizations which focus, at least in part, on improving the lives of children throughout the world. On board the aircraft, AirCares asks KLM passengers to contribute either money or frequent flyer miles.