“When I go back home to my village on holidays, I teach my mother to write,” says Marohri, a thirteen-year-old girl from the state of Andrah Pradesh, South India, where it is always summer. Although she is a teenager, she has worked full time for several years, like most girls in her camp in the small town of Suryapat. In the camp, several dozens of young Indian girls live and learn together. They are only too happy to show all the visitors their books full of English exercises in neat handwriting.

Long days

For seven years, Marohri worked in the local cotton fields. Every morning she had to walk several kilometers to the field, and then spent ten hours spraying fertilizer on cotton plants. The local cotton is sold to multinational companies that make clothes from it. These clothes are then worn by the whole of the Western world. “Even now, I sometimes have breathing difficulties because of those poisons,” says Marohri.

School

A year ago, Marohri's parents sent her to school for the first time. They were persuaded by the MV Foundation, a local non-profit organization, and its volunteers. There is no school, however, within tens of kilometers of where Marohri's parents live, so the girl with a nice smile and happy eyes moved to the camp in Suryapata. She can only go back home in the holidays, and she is very happy to be with her parents again. Like most local girls, she hopes to become a teacher or Indira Gándhí.