Let Them Dream Again: How Kavita rose against the Inevitable

Somewhere on the fringes of a forest in West Champaran, Bihar, a young woman walks confidently in her khaki uniform, the morning sun catching the glint of her badge. Her name is Kavita Kumari, and her story is not just her own—it is a story of transformation, of what happens when we stop accepting the inevitable and start believing in a child’s potential instead.

Kavita’s early life was like that of many other children growing up in remote, under-resourced villages. Her days revolved around farm work, fetching water, and helping her mother cook in other people’s homes. With her father away working as a driver and her mother juggling daily-wage jobs, Kavita’s education halted after Class VIII. It seemed like the end of her academic journey—and the beginning of a life of silent compromise.

But life changed course when members of a children’s collective—supported by CRY and its local partner DEEP—noticed her absence from school. These collectives are not just peer groups; they are safe spaces for children to talk, share and support each other. And that day, they did exactly what they were meant to. The team met Kavita’s parents, understood their constraints, and offered a roadmap—not just for her re-enrolment but for rekindling her confidence.

Kavita was enrolled in a learning centre, supported with books and resources, and slowly but surely, found her way back to school. She cleared her Class X exams in 2020, and her Intermediate exams two years later. And in 2025, Kavita fulfilled a dream not many in her village would have dared to dream—she became a police constable in the Bihar force.

And yet, for every Kavita, there are countless children still caught in the harsh trap of child labour. It is often not just poverty that chains them there—it’s the myths we have come to believe about child labour, myths that let us look away and justify the injustice.

Myth 1: It’s necessary for poor families to survive.

This is perhaps the most widespread belief. While poverty may force families into desperate decisions, suggesting that child labour is a necessary evil denies children the one shot they have at escaping that very poverty—education. Children like 12-year-old Arjun, who once shaped clay bricks with his bare hands in a desolate brick kiln in Bihar, know this too well. His schoolbag lay untouched for months as he worked to supplement the family’s income after his father fell ill.

“I used to love drawing,” he recalled softly. But drawing couldn’t feed a family, and Arjun had no choice but to work—until a CRY-supported initiative helped him re-join school through bridge classes. Today, Arjun is back among blackboards and crayons, reclaiming the childhood that was slipping away.

What families truly need isn’t the income their children bring in but support systems that allow them to let their children study. Community engagement, educational bridge programmes, and awareness drives are proving that there is always another way.

Myth 2: Child labour only happens in factories.

When we imagine child labour, we often think of grimy factories and hazardous work zones. But the reality is more invisible. A large number of children are hidden in plain sight: working on farms, running errands at roadside tea stalls, or, like 13-year-old Rani from West Bengal, scrubbing floors in someone’s kitchen. Rani worked as a domestic helper in a cramped apartment, far from home and even farther from a classroom. She ate leftovers and rarely smiled. But the intervention of local volunteers changed that. She was counselled, enrolled in a government school, and today, she walks to class every morning—books in hand, hope in heart.

The informal nature of this work often makes it harder to detect and easier to justify. “She’s just helping,” some might say. “It’s part of growing up.” But we forget that help quickly becomes unpaid labour, that chores grow into full-day shifts, and that the line between contribution and burdened work is easily crossed.

Myth 3: Children can study and work—it teaches them life skills and helps the family.

At first glance, this myth sounds almost practical. What’s wrong, after all, with a child helping out at home or working a little before or after school? Doesn’t it teach them responsibility, discipline, and real-world skills that school alone may not offer?

But here’s the problem: this mindset blurs the line between supportive involvement and labour. Children are not adults. Their growing bodies and developing minds are wired for play, learning, social interaction, and rest—not for juggling work shifts and school hours.

In reality, when children are expected to contribute through labour—be it in fields, homes, shops, or construction sites—their energy, time, and focus are compromised. Homework is skipped, classes missed, and eventually, dropout becomes a looming inevitability.

Even when the intention is noble — “let them learn work and learn skills early”—the result is rarely empowering. These so-called ‘skills’ are often repetitive, unskilled tasks with little scope for growth. And rather than building confidence, they frequently cement the idea that this is all a child is capable of.

Children don’t need work to learn responsibility. They need encouragement, role models, opportunities to explore their interests, and access to meaningful education that integrates practical life skills in age-appropriate ways. There is a difference between a child helping out occasionally and being relied upon for labour. And too often, what begins as “helping” soon becomes “handling”—burdens far beyond what any child should bear.

Hope Is a Strategy

What ties the stories of Arjun, Kavita and Rani together is not charity or luck—it is intervention. Someone noticed. Someone cared enough to ask why a child was missing from class. Someone offered support, however modest. And that made all the difference.

The journey from child labour to education is not an easy one, but it is always worthwhile. It brings back more than just a child to school—it brings back joy, potential, and agency.More importantly, it forces us to re-examine the narratives we so often accept. Do children really need to work to help their families? Or do families need better safety nets? Is child labour only what we see in the headlines? Or is it the silent fatigue in a little girl’s eyes as she scrubs someone else’s floor? Can children always catch up? Or do they sometimes need a hand to hold and guide them across the bridge?

The answers lie not in data, but in stories. Stories like Kavita’s, Arjun’s, and Rani’s. Stories of grit, transformation, and community support. It’s never about one girl making it to her dreams, or one boy returning to the classroom from the kilns. It’s about breaking a cycle.And, it’s about belief. To believe that every child deserves to be in school, to dream, to play, and to thrive.

When a child like Kavita moves from labour to learning to leadership, she lights the path for an entire generation.

Because children don’t ask for much. They don’t want our sympathy. They want a fair shot.And when they get it, they show us just how high they can fly.

The author is the Regional Director, CRY (East)