Inside our School on Wheels · Mumbai
Child Action gets Mumbai's street and slum children learning. We stay deliberately small: rather than spreading funds thinly, we back a handful of grassroots organisations in depth — and because we know their work street by street, we can tell our supporters exactly what their money did. Since 2010 we have granted over £1,000,000 for children's education in Mumbai.
Education on the move
Some children can't get to a classroom — so ours have wheels. With Doorstep School we support two School on Wheels buses: full classrooms that park where the children already are, across 12 Mumbai neighbourhoods. Pupils are collected from the streets and slum dwellings where they live and taught on board by qualified teachers, backed by home visits that keep attendance on track.
The buses reach 750+ street children every year. In 2025–26, literacy proficiency rose from 60% to 92%, numeracy from 58% to 96%, and 31 children moved on into formal school.
Learning through play
Many street children work to survive, and childhood is lost early. With The Opentree Foundation — which we first backed as Toybank — we fund play-based learning that turns classrooms into play spaces, where at-risk children build the critical thinking, communication and confidence that make learning stick.
Helping children stay in school
Starting school is one thing; staying there is another. For years our grants supported Apnalaya's education and citizenship work in Shivaji Nagar, including the School Saheli mentoring scheme that helped girls stay in school. We no longer fund active projects there, but that work shaped how we think about everything we fund.
In UK classrooms
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. Read about our legacy programme, Enterprise 4 Change.
Fundraising in the UK
All of this is kept flying by schools, families, students and trusts here in the UK — bake sales, sleep-outs, triathlons and big-hearted weddings. See what fundraisers have managed — and how you could join them.