The IKEA Foundation has announced a €7 million ($9.5 million) grant to Save the Children and its partners Breakthrough and Pratham to expand efforts to protect children in India at risk of becoming child laborers.

The funds will support the second phase of an initiative launched in 2009 to keep children in India's cotton-growing regions out of cotton fields and in classrooms, where they can learn, play, grow, and develop as children. During its initial phase, the initiative reached more than 600,000 children in 1,800 villages in the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat through education and child protection programs; helped improve school enrollment rates; and trained nearly 2,000 teachers and 1,900 community health education workers.

Phase two aims to protect 790,000 children in the states of Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan, where the partner organizations will work with local community leaders, farmers, teachers, families, and officials to provide access to quality education, improve teacher training, develop child protection and school management committees, and establish community groups to tackle issues such as gender-based discrimination. In addition, an inter-state migration network based on a successful model developed in phase one will be established to identify migrant child workers and help return them to their families, homes, and communities.

"We know there is no quick-fix solution to ending child labor, but long–term approaches can yield impressive results," said IKEA Foundation CEO Per Heggenes. "The IKEA Foundation, with our partners, has been tackling this issue in India for nearly a decade. This new phase reinforces our long-term commitment and our desire to help millions more children out of child labor and back into the classrooms."

(Photo: A child plucks cotton buds in India. Credit: Save the Children and the IKEA Foundation.)