Muskan Ahirwar - a 14-year old social worker for Bhopal slum kids

 

An educated girl stays healthy, saves money, builds a business, empowers her community, and lifts her country. Following this saying, Bhopal’s 14-year-old Muskan Ahirwar has been running a library for slum kids since the year 2016 to encourage reading habits for kids from a very early age. Her library, ‘Baal Pustakalaya’ is situated in her home in Durganagar, a slum area in Arera Hills of Bhopal,

Book reading plays a crucial part in our life as apart from enriching our vocabulary and increasing attention span, daily reading habit develops a love for books all through our life and encourages a thirst for knowledge. The more knowledge we get, the better equipped we are to tackle any challenge we may face. Inspired by these noble thoughts, 9-year-old Muskan started the library in her mud-paved house with only 25 books in her collection.

Unlike every other child, Muskan does not go to play after her school hours but starts collecting her books, mats, along with her elder sister Neha and sets up the library for all the children in her slum. Initially, she had to face a lot of difficulties from the slum dwellers as people were ignorant and children were reluctant to read. Presently, her library is operated in the outside part of her house from 5 to 7 pm and nearly 25-30 children living in the slum eagerly wait to open the library.

"Kids can borrow any book they like after I enter their name in my register," Mushkan said, adding that these kids also finish their homework at 'Baal Pustakalya". These kids are developing a flair for reading with the help of a bunch of civil services aspirants who visit the library regularly. Muskan’s Baal Pustakalya receives books from the United States, South Africa, and other countries, besides Indian cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, etc.

Muskan, second among four children in her family, says she loves reading and wishes to become a doctor one day.

The journey of the library started in December 2015 when officers from the State Education Centre, Madhya Pradesh visited Muskaan’s slum to explore the Learning Curve of slum children. The officers conducted a quiz session amongst the children, in which, Muskaan, a natural talent emerged victoriously. Pleased with her performance, the officers handed over a total of 25 Books as a token of appreciation and asked her to share the same with all the children in her locality. The kids finished reading all the books within two months and they eagerly waited for a fresh set of books. To their delight, on the Republic Day of the year 2016, a new set of books arrived at their premises. 

After its successful journey of five years, the library now houses around 1,000 books. Muskaan lost hope of continuing the library after the death of her father, Manohar Ahirwar on July 7, 2017, but to keep her spirit of supporting the children of slums, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mr. Shivraj Singh Chouhan has extended Govt. support by offering Rs. 2 Lakhs as financial assistance to support her library. The government has also promised to construct a permanent structure for her Library near her premises. The Chief Minister has also urged the entire society to back up such initiatives of children so that the social fabric will entirely transform.

Muskan received the ‘Thought Leader’ award by NITI Aayog from Olympic medallist & wrestler Sakshi Malik in 2016. She was the youngest recipient of this award. She was one of the 12 winners selected as part of the ‘Women Transforming India’ campaign. This online campaign was launched on International Women’s Day by Niti Aayog in collaboration with MyGov and United Nations. In 2019, Muskan decided to donate all the money she had been saving for her birthday to the Sainik Kalyan Fund after the attack on CRPF personnel in Pulwama, J&K.

Muskan has also been awarded prestigious awards including ‘Princess Diana Award 2018’ in the U, ‘Sushiksha Award 2017’. Muskan’s out-of-the-box initiative of building a library for slum kids is felicitated at Hyderabad Literary Festival on January 25, 2019. The 14-year old is awarded for winning Indian Reading Olympiad 2019 under the category ‘I am Bond’. The event awarded winners in all the other 13 categories as future role models. She was also featured in the Devi Awards Indore countdown series on February 28, 2020.

Parikrma – An avant-garde approach to provide high-quality education to under-served children

 

Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a nonprofit organization that runs schools for underprivileged children in Bangalore challenged one of the most shameful and enduring injustices of post-independence India’s crumbling education system. The unwritten social contract of ‘education for the classes, literacy for the masses’ has continuously restricted the upward mobility of hundreds of millions of midnight’s children. Addressing the need for quality education for children with no or limited means, Parikrma school education model reformed education, unleashed the potential of underserved populations below the poverty line and enabled those kids to live their lives on equal terms and become valuable contributing members of society.

The holistic ‘Circle of Life’ model of Parikrma for educating under-served children is unique and different from the initiatives taken by the government in association with several nonprofit organizations, as they mainly concentrate on educating a huge number of children but ignore the quality of the education. Consequently, it forms a huge gap between the children who can access high-quality education at private schools and the kids who can avail themselves only of the sub-standard government schools and low-cost, poor quality private schools. This gap gradually forms the inequality where the privileged few going on to college and getting meaningful jobs, while others simply drop out of the system. Parikrma tried to narrow this gap by choosing and enrolling children from slum-dwelling families who earn below 5k per month and could never afford to send their children to school. The organization wants to prepare these children to integrate with society, hold high-end jobs at multinational companies, and not work at the lower end of the spectrum. To make these dreams true, Parikrma alumni today are working as chefs in Dublin, lead actress, marathoner, professional footballer, Entertainment MD on an international cruiser, entrepreneurs, dentist, graphic designer, fashion designer, lawyers, and more. Starting in the year 2003 by Shukla Bose, Parikrma now has four schools, one junior college, and one girls' hostel. It accommodates 1,566 students from 69 slums and four orphanages.

 

Within two years of its registration, Parikrma established four centers in the garden city (Koramangla, Sahakarnagar, Jayanagar, and Nandhini Layout) as model primaries to break with the unequal school education system of the past century and thereafter, under which the children of the poor and socially disadvantaged were flocked into vernacular medium, indifferently serviced Dickensian-style poor schools affiliated to undemanding state boards. In Parikrma, they don’t just receive free education, but high-quality CBSE English medium learning modules delivered by 45 well-qualified and mission-driven teachers. The children have access to the best labs, both national and international programs and workshops, access to all kinds of sports, interactive hands-on learning from experts in diverse fields, hosted some of the best science and sports festivals in the country, and are part of global youth leadership summits. The teachers here receive national and international training, are part of leadership programs, and are consistently inspired to be able to motivate and challenge the kids. They are part of the British Council Global School Exchange Program, UK. Through their ETC program, the organization continues to foster excellence in teaching and learning, impacting over 1000s of teachers from government schools, NGO workers, and social entrepreneurs.

Parikrma focuses on healthcare, as physical and mental well-being is critical to children’s learning in school. Apart from imparting high-quality education, the organization provides breakfast. lunch, and snacks with a high-protein drink before the child leaves school. The Parikrma healthcare program includes immunization, hospitalization, regular check-ups, and other medical interventions. Since these children belong to families where substance abuse and violence are regular, mental health counseling is also provided by the foundation. Parikrma also runs reading and writing classes for their illiterate parents, as well as skill-based training, such as tailoring and cosmetology courses to help the mothers of students earn a living. A supportive and peaceful home environment is important for the overall development of the child. The foundation monitors the families and helps the addicted or demotivated adult males to rehabilitate. Parikrma’s community development program offers healthcare education to parents with a focus on family planning and AIDS prevention, vocational training for older siblings, hygiene and sanitation information, and women empowerment programs. Their microfinance plans help parents save and borrow money to run small businesses like selling fruits and vegetables. Children in Parikrma are supported from the age of 5 to 25 years and the foundation also bears the costs of their further education, either in the form of formal college education or vocational training.

During the Covid pandemic, the foundation started an initiative where their volunteers go to places with their begging bowls asking people to donate their unused smartphones and raised funds to get laptops and phones for their students to bring the school to poor children. Parikrma registered a program called Reach-V to engage the community and parents, train teachers, establish SOS lines, and introduce relevant content for online sessions.