Brick Kilns Programme 
This project is an Integrated Urban Development programme for migrant families working and living at brick kiln factories in the Kolkata slums.
A GOAL-designed initiative, it is being implemented through local partner organisations at 35 brick kilns in the slums of Kolkata.
The employment and living conditions at the brick kilns are amongst the harshest in the region.
Children as young as five years toil alongside their parents in backbreaking work, carrying mud and moulding bricks. Pregnant women work to within a couple of hours of going into labour, returning to work a few hours after giving birth with the new baby left in the care of a sibling as young as seven or eight years. The highest wage a woman can earn is barely enough to buy one meal a day.
Entire families work and live at the kilns; they are mostly migrant workers from neighbouring states within India, or from Bangladesh. Limited livelihood opportunities in their own rural areas have them working at the kilns for up to nine months of the year. With the support of our local partners, GOAL has introduced an education component by providing children with literacy and numeric skills that would otherwise not be available to them.
We are also piloting a literacy and numeric course for adults so they can count the bricks they produce, and check this against payment, to ensure they are being properly remunerated.
As part of our healthcare and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) activities, GOAL and its partners are providing tube-wells for clean drinking water for the workers, while latrines are also being constructed.
The kiln workers are receiving help with accessing their basic entitlements and employment rights under local and national government schemes.
GOAL's work in the Brick Kilns
Click here to read about the visit of GOAL patrons and rugby stars Jamie Heaslip and Bob Casey to some of GOAL's programmes in Kolkata, including the Brick Kilns.
For general information on GOAL's work in India, click here.