At Muskaan, we have come to a belief that realization of empowerment through education journey in the lives of children and young people from marginalized communities would be wholesome when there would be conscious and consistent attempts to assess and address their own living realities and similarly the other vulnerable communities. To ensure this, we adopt critical learning processes within the space of formal school as well as community spaces/contexts.
We engage with the members of the community and develop collective capabilities of people of varied age groups, whilst being conscious that each of the community members is also on their personal journey. The intent is to ensure that there can be a space through which each member of the community can also draw strength from a collective pursuit as well. Developing thought leaders of marginalized communities who can determine the essential interventions at the community level is at core of our mandate.
Working with people, we believe that we cannot segregate issues of their lives and select/limit the organizational mandate. To do so based on organizational convenience is to turn the back to the unjust ecosystem that exists. Therefore, issues of protection as sexual abuse, violence, or access to entitlements, as health or PDS are all areas which have become an integral concern to us.
We have been actively working and learning on this journey with members of denotifed tribes and the urban poor since 1998.
In this course of journey, Muskaan has also attempted to escalate the experiences and context of the children from marginalized groups in the arena of children’s literature. On this platform, there are stories published by Muskaan where one can find…
Special stories… and special handmade products… for special people.
All the products in this store have been prepared with a commitment to a world equal and respectful of all.
Our books bring stories from the margins into the mainstream, and can be used as fun books to read as well as facilitating literacy and fluency in young children. As a mirror, these stories are an affirmation of ourselves as well as a looking glass through which you can see us. Join Shabnam as she takes you through her Wednesday evening in the weekly market in ‘Pani Bechti Hai’ while Sanjana joins her father for a hunt in ‘The Pardhi Rule’.
During Covid lockdowns, a group of adolescent girls in Ahsan Nagar Basti learnt to make dairies and soaps. The girls are part of a community that depends on scrap-picking for its source of income, and it has taken a lot of personal perseverance for each one of them to imagine that there could be another form of livelihood. Let’s keep up this promise by picking up from their range of useful and natural products.
