Stories from MukkaMaar

For the Women’s Day event, we really wished the parents would be more involved, and did multiple parent teacher meets. Less than 5% of the parents would turn up, but with constant persuasion, 200+ parents showed up on the event day, along with 500+ girls.

Post our child sexual abuse seminar in a school, a girl (12) was able to report the rape and abuse she had been facing for more than 6 months to the correct authorities, and the parent informed us and said she would like her daughter to learn self-defence as long as we teach.  *Name changed

Nazma (32) and her daughter used to come to class in burkhas, without telling her family who were dead against girls going out of the house. Nazma herself had to quit her job after marriage. When her daughter won a District Gold medal, Nazma’s family changed their stance and Nazma even did school tie-ups for MukkaMaar as a project co-ordinator.

Periods are always a tricky matter to tackle. We cover the topic even in our teacher’s trainings to equip our faculty to deal with it, since ours is a physical class. We are proud to say that girls in Municipal schools have walked up to our male instructors, and told them they had periods at the time of class.

The dress-code for the competitions, is shorts and t-shirt, which resulted in a huge backlash. We overcame that hurdle through talks and have never looked back. The girls in Versova have been going for competitions for 2 years now, and last time, even came back to the slum in shorts.

Soni (14), after 1 year of training informed us that she has 3 of her own students, who she trains in a park. We now have recruited her as a teacher assistant with a stipend, during the vacations.