Muskaan

A FAMILY SHE CAN COUNT ON!

8-year old Muskaan* has been Vision Rescue’s student since 2019. Muskaan lives with her mother Sajida* and grandparents in one of the poorest parts of Mumbai – M East Ward. The slum community where Muskaan lives is surrounded by the city’s largest and oldest dumping ground which can accommodate almost 268 football fields. People here live in abject poverty and being an unauthorized settlement they are deprived of basic government services such as water, electricity, schools, proper sanitation, etc.

A while ago, Muskaan’s parents separated. She and her mother Sajida, came to live at her maternal grandparent’s home.

Sajida is determined to give her child the best that she can. She does tailoring jobs to provide basic necessities for her family. Your gifts had not only brought Muskaan to our Beacon Learning Centre but along with quality education, Muskaan received uniforms, stationery, health and dental assessments and also hearty nutritious meals every weekday. Through the pandemic, Muskaan stuck to her education with us, and today, she studies in our OBE Class 2 and her teachers say that, “She has been improving in her studies and knows the names of so many animals and birds in English!”

Vision Rescue aims not only to engage children in education but also to sustain them in education. So to sustain Muskaan in education, we encouraged Sajida to join our focus group meetings for parents and enrol in our vocational courses.

When the lockdowns happened in 2020, Sajida feared that their situation would become dire. With no source of income during the pandemic, as all daily-wage labour was shut, and zero savings, Sajida had no option but to worry about her daughter, the roof over her head and the pandemic. Your donations reached out to Muskaan right on time with groceries each month of the pandemic, and hearty nutritious snacks for little Muskaan.

During the pandemic, Muskaan was also a part of our ‘A Library in Every Home’ initiative. We believe that a house with books in it has a long term impact on building lifelong learners and so during the pandemic, we encouraged our children to set up low-cost home libraries. We were so glad to see little Muskaan setting up her home-library too!

Sajida couldn’t control her happiness when she saw Muskaan’s progress report card at the bi-annual Open House. Muskaan loves to study and dreams of becoming a teacher when she grows up. We look forward to enrolling Muskaan in a formal school soon.

Thank you for paving the way for Muskaan’s future and thank you for standing with them in their difficult times. As a single mother Sajida has had many moments of fear for their future. But today, Muskaan and Sajida know that come what may, the Vision Rescue family of supporters is there to guide and support them on their path to progress.