Project Description
Muskaan started as an effort to provide opportunities for meaningful
education amongst children from deprived background in late 1997.
Twenty slum children, working and out of schools, became part of a
2-hour schedule of fun and learning (both ways). The daily interaction
with the children and a constant exposure to the hardships the
communities and specific groups go through resulted in an increased
and a more planned response to other concern areas including education
and also the number of children and slums. We are thus today working
with over 400 children across 6 slums and with their parents.
Our primary work focus has been on children's education; building
academic and emotional capabilities in the children to be part of a
regular school system; mobilizing parents and their larger communities
to value education as a definite input in their children's lives and
to take steps and decisions enabling this; help children to adjust to
formal schools. The activities in the community have grown and matured
with the community demanding attention on certain other issues and
also our recognition of the glaring needs in the bastis.
Community-level initiatives have emerged thereof savings groups,
income generation and health. We are trying to build these with an
integrative approach where a group of people from the community
emerging in a collective leadership for managing and responding to the
development needs in their areas
Goal of WAH 2005 Proposal
Work An Hour 2005 will help support the recurring expenses of Muskaan.
