Welcome to Bal Ashram

For a child slave, entering Bal Ashram is the beginning of a new life.

Mending broken souls and bodies is the mission of the child rehabilitation center at Bal Ashram in Viratnagar, Rajasthan. Once child laborers have been found and rescued, a long process begins. Those children whose families are intact are reunited with their parents, but others, who were trafficked at such a young age that they are not able to identify their home villages and families, end up here, spending their childhoods in the company of their peers, helping each other recover. Several of the staffers and teachers at Bal Ashram are former child laborers themselves. On the recent shoot, we met Kinsu Kumar, one of the early child laborers, who participated in the Global March. He now attends university, and comes home to Bal Ashram every couple of weekends, to check in and help out.