Education for Mumbai's street & slum children
Child Action gets Mumbai's street and slum children learning using schools on wheels and play-based education, through grassroots partners who know every child by name.
Small or large — every gift reaches children through partners we visit, audit and report on.
Our partners
Their promise: safe, familiar spaces where learning and wellbeing take root. We stay deliberately small — by backing just a handful of organisations, and knowing their work street by street, we can tell you exactly what your money did. Today we fund Doorstep School and The Opentree Foundation, and we're proud of the years of work we funded with Apnalaya.
How our work fits together
Education on the move
Founder: Bina Lashkari
If children can't come to school, the school comes to the children. Doorstep rebuilds buses as fully working classrooms and drives them to the streets and slum settlements where pupils live — teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, hygiene and safety.
Our two School on Wheels buses reach 750+ street children every year across Mumbai.
More about Doorstep School
Learning through play
Founder: Shweta Chari
In Mumbai's slum communities, childhood is often crowded out by hardship and adult responsibilities. Play — the spark of curiosity, confidence and emotional wellbeing — disappears far too early. Opentree's Foundational Play™ programme brings it back, building resilience, problem-solving and joyfulness through structured sessions.
Foundational Play™ reaches 78,000 children and 5,000 teachers across 7 districts — over 1,000,000 children reached since inception.
More about The Opentree Foundation
Legacy partner
Founder: Annabel Mehta
Starting school is one thing; staying there is another. For years our grants supported Apnalaya's work in Shivaji Nagar, where community workers transform their own neighbourhoods — with education and citizenship at the centre. We no longer fund active projects there, but we're proud of what this partnership built.
Our support included the School Saheli mentoring scheme, helping girls stay in school.
More about Apnalaya
Legacy partner · UK
Founder: King Charles
Working with the British Asian Trust, one of the King's Charities, we organised "Mumbai Experiences" — cross-curricular sessions in London schools to educate children on global poverty and introduce the idea of philanthropy.
More about Enterprise 4 ChangeFundraise
Schools, families and students power our work. Strategic partners help us deepen and scale it. Here's how you can help create the next chapter.
Our story
Child Action was founded in 2010 by Seema Sharma after travelling to Mumbai for Channel 4's only overseas episode of Secret Millionaire. What she saw there — children living and working on the streets, girls caring for siblings instead of going to school, families doing everything they could to survive — never let go.
Seema and her brother Anuj grew up in a family shaped by education and development. Her father, Jagdish, worked for the Overseas Development Agency in Zambia and later for the World Bank, focusing on infrastructure and community development across Africa. Her mother, Sneh, was a primary school teacher who believed that every child, given a real chance, could surprise you. Those values — dignity, opportunity, and the transformative power of learning — became the foundation of Child Action long before the charity existed.
A dentist by training, Seema knows firsthand the opportunities education opens up; she built her own career on them and Child Action exists to pass that chance on.
We've stayed intimate on purpose. Child Action is a small, strategic UK charity supporting children and girls in India's most underserved communities. By supporting only a handful of organisations, we understand each project deeply, work alongside our partners on strategy and impact, and keep supporters updated on exactly where their money went.
Seema's husband Sanjay is a co-trustee and Anuj's wife has also served as a co-trustee. Even the next generation is involved: Seema and Anuj's children are our Youth Ambassadors and volunteer with our partners in Mumbai themselves.
Foundations. Child Action begins backing Toybank, Doorstep School and Apnalaya — grassroots teams working with children in Mumbai's slums and construction-site communities.
Growth. We deepen the partnerships — co-funding School on Wheels, backing Toybank's move into government schools, and supporting girls through School Saheli.
Digital transformation. Through the pandemic our partners pivot to digital learning: 400 devices, 4,000 children reached through blended learning, and Play2Learn digital content.
Systems change. Toybank develops Foundational Play™ — endorsed by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra — and Child Action becomes its largest corpus funder.
The next chapter. We are building a £1 million corpus fund to provide permanent, stable funding for Toybank and Doorstep School — ensuring their work continues for decades.
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."Frederick Douglass
Every donation goes further than you think — and we'll show you exactly where it went.