Little Spark

Little Spark is an organization that seeks to promote individual and corporate social responsibility by transforming small ideas into projects with massive global impacts.

With an international network of corporate sponsors and volunteers, Little Spark designs, implements and promotes creative solutions to current social and environmental concerns on a project basis. Through this network, we also provide a platform for students and companies with shared professional interests to connect and co-create profitable, sustainable and responsible solutions.

A Thousand Homes, A Thousand Schools

A Thousand Homes, A Thousand Schools is the first project Little Spark is undertaking. Its goal is to provide underprivileged, mostly illiterate child laborers in India with basic education that will empower them in their understanding of and interaction with their direct environment. Furthermore, this increased literacy will promote their chances of potentially improving their standard of living.

The problem

The government of India estimates that 20 million children are forced to work as domestic help to support their families. UNICEF, however, expects that this is a gross underestimation of reality. It is startlingly commonplace to see children as young as 8 years old having to sacrifice their childhoods and education in order to earn a living. While there are laws that prohibit the employment of children, they do not provide a sustainable economic alternative for these underprivileged children. The legal system does not take into account the debts, societal marginalization or poverty that obligates them to work. With no real alternatives, poor families are forced to send their children to work instead of school. These children are confined to low wage jobs even into adulthood because of their illiteracy and thus remain poor, thereby being forced to start the cycle again with their own children.

How it started

The project is inspired by Mala’s experiences. In 2010, like many Indian students, Mala had returned to India during an academic break. During her vacations she had the opportunity to work with a 9 year old girl named Kajol, who was sent out to work as a maid in her neighborhood. Kajol had attended the compulsory primary school in her area, and had been declared ‘literate’ after an examination. In reality, she could barely spell more than her name.

Mala helped Kajol with basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills every day by using creative tools such as videos, paints, clay and play acting. Her main goal was to provide Kajol with literacy that would make her more self sufficient and aware, in this case being able to read the names of goods in a grocery store and counting the change that was given to her. By the end of her stay, Mala had taught Kajol English and Bengali numbers, as well as how to write useful words. Kajol enjoyed the experience so much, she began to bring her sister Anita along as well. While blogging about her experience, Mala realized many of her peers would enjoy helping in the same way but lacked the tools, creativity or time to create lesson plans to take such an initiative. Thus, the idea of creating the resources for volunteers to easily and effectively teach the underprivileged children was born.

Our goal

Providing children with functional literacy that is relevant to their everyday lives is not only useful, it also creates a realization that education is important for improving their standard of living. We hope to extend this opportunity to at least another 1000 children like Kajol by recruiting students to volunteer during their academic breaks to teach children who are working in their neighborhoods.

We intend to create a website that provides audio/video aids for learning simple tasks such as “Telling time” or “Reading a grocery list”, as well as provide volunteers with starter kits for teaching with appropriate educational aids such as textbooks and art supplies.