Muskaan’s Journey to Capacitate Communities and its Team

Muskaan was set up in 1998 in Bhopal. Since then, it has been working with marginalized communities on education, identity, violence, health, livelihood, and survival needs. Their primary focus remains on supporting learning journeys of children from these communities and developing their capacities as youths. In this interview, we discuss Muskaan’s approach and journey with Shivani, founding member of Muskaan, and Brijesh, Savita, and Chandni, core team members of the organization. Chandni started her journey with Muskaan as a student in the classes that the organization facilitated.

Samuhik Pahal: It would be helpful if you could please share with us the vision with which Muskaan was set up.

Shivani: Muskaan started around 25 years back. Initially, the team focused on tutoring a few kids in a basti in Bhopal, and we tried to ensure that the out-of-school children were enrolled in appropriate grades. We quickly realized that our work could not be limited to a year or two.

To ensure that the children’s learning is meaningful for them, we felt that we would have to deepen our support and touch various aspects of their life. That’s how the scope and vision of Muskaan’s work also expanded over the years.

It is heartening to see people like Chandni diligently pursue their dreams and passionately work with marginalized communities. In 1997, Chandni, now my colleague, was in the first group of childrern we started working with. She has been associated with the team ever since.

She completed her schooling from 1998 to 2008. After finishing her schooling, she completed two years of engineering, pursued her graduation, worked for a while, and is presently studying Law. When we closely observe her learning trajectory, we understand the role we need to play to ensure that children from a background like Chandni’s can pursue their dreams.

Often the need to learn comes through community driven pressure – if you need to respond to community (needs) you need to learn.

Samuhik Pahal: How do you try to achieve synergy between the needs and learning journeys of individual team members and that of the organization?

Brijesh: I remember that I joined with three other individuals. We were all freshers without any experience. The thing that helped us in viewing our journeys in tandem with the organization’s journey was our lengthy discussions with team members. When new team members join they learn about various aspects of the work by participating in these discussions, arriving at consensus and working on them. With time, synergies at different levels including aims, approaches, values and commitment become visible to individuals as well as to the organization.

Shivani: Allowing/encouraging new members to interact and work directly in the field helps bring in commitment to the community. This individual attachment and commitment towards the community is what helps the organization bring in stability and synergy.

Samuhik Pahal: Could you please talk more on how working directly with communities has aided in augmenting the learnings and capacities of team members?

Allowing/encouraging new members to interact and work directly in the field helps bring in commitment to the community.

Shivani: Muskaan values field experiences to augment the learning of an individual. By actively working with the communities, we observed that our planning of training and programs was grounded. If an individual fails to work with communities, then their learning quickly stagnates. The entire team used to sit together for a month, talking, reading, listening to resource persons, discussing and reaching a common understanding for our work; and our experiences from working with the communities helped us plan better. It also helped us remain committed to the children of the bastis and always made us feel as if we are a family.

Continuously working with communities has allowed individuals to live important milestones of the organization together and build their own learning. Every threefour years, we witness some important milestones, whether it is with respect to the direction or new elements of work, and they impact the team members. Although people may decide to leave the organization, the milestones make their journeys exciting.

For instance, we had Heman, an Azim Premji University student, intern with us and then later join us as a team member. He specifically wished to focus on the issues of de-notified tribes that we work with. He was a witness to four significant cases of violence against members of a community during his short stint. In a few years, he might move to another workplace, but his learnings would stay with him.

Samuhik Pahal: How do you think the organization and the members learned together? Could you please elaborate on this by recounting specific instances?

Brijesh: In 2004, the team was trying to understand the challenges that made the children we supported later drop out from government schools. These challenges were making the children not only drop out but also exit the formal schooling system altogether. We then revisited our approach and decided to closely start working with the teachers in government schools through trainings and classroom demonstrations.

However, we noticed that the teachers wrongly started viewing us as their substitutes in classrooms and there was a lack of acceptance. This challenge made the team again revisit our strategy. We decided to work with the Education Department only when we were invited. Continuous evolution of organization’s purpose, approaches and strategy is in a way a outcome of our learning and reflections.

In terms of individual/personal learning, these experiences helped me dispel my myth around school being the only site of a child’s learning process. I realized that a child could learn in any conducive environment.

Some of us had latent biases against marginalized communities that were quickly dispelled by working with the communities. By working in proximity with these communities, we understood the people, their challenges and various aspects of their lives better, and became friends and co-travellers with them.

Savita: Through my experiences of running centre/classes in one of the communities for three years without having any place as such, I learnt to trust communities’ intentions and desire to educate their children. And they found alternative places where I could sit and teach, and made me comfortable and cared for me as I worked with their kids.

Samuhik Pahal: How do you look at your work with children (in terms of capacities)?

Shivani: There was an event that made me more conscious about how the schooling system fails to build the capacities of children from underserved communities. I remember meeting a child in school. She would always meet me enthusiastically when I met her in the basti. But here where we had enrolled her, even as we made eye contact, the child would immediately look away. I then wondered what exactly education teaches our children. Our children were not learning to be confident enough to present themselves as individuals and their views. Education is supposed to build students’ capacities and should not focus only on enhancing literacy. Unfortunately, the system fails the children from underserved communities. They do not get the power to voice their opinions even if they do learn literacy, which is also not happening.

Communities start to trust us when they see us responding to their needs. We might go there with some project; but we must address their needs and issues.

Samuhik Pahal: How do you approach the creation of second line of leadership within the Organization?

Shivani: When the scope of organization’s work widens and expands, it is difficult, almost impossible, for it to occupy mindspace of one or two individuals. It is necessary that multiple individuals think about different areas of work to maintain depth and pace of the work. Each such space needs leadership and people do come forward to occupy these spaces. And when people accept and come forward to occupy particular spaces, work in these areas grows. Each one of us brings in our own strengths and ways of working. Therefore, different people in the leadership role bring their own strengths and would lead work differently.

Samuhik Pahal: To build leadership within communities, Muskaan has encouraged the setting up of initiatives and organizations by community members. Could you please elaborate on this process?

Savita: Facilitating discussion around various issues of communities through various means like classroom discussions, games, and workshops has been part of Muskaan’s core approach. Apart from that, efforts have also been made to facilitate discussions among members of communities to nurture different types of collectives within communities. Through a process of such meetings, youth from the Pardhi community decided to form a group to work on issues faced by their own community. They decided to name it – Mazal (मजल) – a Pardhi word which mean Destination (मंज़िल)– as the group felt they were deciding their own destination and direction.

The name Mazal was arrived at through democratic means through deep discussions around the meaning of the word. With Mazal, in the beginning, women representation was relatively less. But the group and members of the community made efforts to encourage women in their bastis or mohallas to engage more participation. Mazal operates on inclusive democratic principles and internal processes that allow each member to voice their concerns. The issues that are put forward by the community are collectively addressed. They cover various challenges ranging from access to education, problems with panchayats, legal issues and girls’ independence.

Shivani: Existence of a group like Mazal, comprising of youth from the community, creates stronger hope for people both inside the community as well as outside it. Internally driven hope is more significant compared to the hope created by an external organization or an external individual as Muskaan or any one of us.

Chandni: I had enrolled in the classes by Muskaan. The value system of the organization ensures that team members remain close to the community. I finished my degree in Law a few months back. We facilitated the setting up of a group of 20 young people from the Gond community in Bhopal. The name of this collective is ‘Sanghwaari’ which in Gondi means companionship. The youth who form the core group of the collective have had varied educational levels and experiences. But all of them are committed to voicing the issues of their community. Members of the Muskaan team know that they might not always be with the community and address their issues. Thus, capacitating becomes imperative.

Tasveer (Mazal) and I (Sanghwaari) are part of different collectives. We wish to practice law and address the issue of police atrocities against marginalized communities. In the last one or two years, there have been substantial efforts to set up the process and recently towards registering Sanghwaari. I believe that disseminating information on relevant laws, constitutional rights, and historical injustices would aid the community to be aware of the wrongs meted out against them.

Shivani: All of us are happy that the community’s youth took the initiative to set up their organization and voice their concerns. We might decide to pack our bags and leave the work that we are doing. It is better that organically, community members are empowered to defend their rights. We are waiting for that day when a group member says they have a relative in Itarsi and Nagpur and how they could collaborate to take the initiative forward there and not limit it to their own geographies.

Two community specific groups Sanghwari (Gond) and Mazal (Pardhi) have emerged under the leadership of children and youth who have been associated with Muskaan in different ways. They have their own genuine reasons due to which they see the need of forming community specific groups. But at the same time, many of them are part of the core group at Muskaan which still remains a space where work continues with multiple communities. These groups work with strong respect and dignity for their own identity and stand for the progressive values they believe in. The good thing is leadership of these groups have 8-10 people and not just 1-2 people driving it.

Facilitating discussion around various issues of communities through various means like classroom discussions, games, and workshops has been part of Muskaan’s core approach.

Samuhik Pahal: Since the team closely interacts with communities, they must be significantly invested in their problems. The challenges of de-notified tribes are multi-faceted. How does the team deal with setbacks in their work?

Shivani: The Muskaan team hears many stories of violence from various kinds of people. We have witnessed community members aged from ten years to seventy years committing suicide. Every death is a setback to us. Each life lost means that it was a person who could not receive the support they desperately needed. Some of these drastic disappointments we have live with not for days but for weeks and months. During these tough times, we reminded ourselves that it would take time and perseverance and we have to go on. There is a reluctance to speak and address mental health problems. There has been an appointment of counsellors in the bastis who could provide aid.

Samuhik Pahal: How does Muskaan ensure enhancing the capacities at a personal and a community level?

Brijesh: Opportunities play an important role in capacity building. For example, you are part of a project in which you get opportunities and responsibilities to write proposal or reports and that helps you develop certain skills and capabilities. On the other hand, need to act in a given situation also enhances capacities of different kinds. For instance, if there would be a visit to the police station, then community members would be encouraged or forced to voice their views.

Savita: When I joined the organization, I was nervous about taking classes and adopting new pedagogic methods. But the only way in which I was truly capacitated was by holding classes. Apart from learning by doing, sharing or presenting our work, understanding with others has also helped me gain confidence and capabilities.

Chandni: Capacity building could happen in any manner. I remember when I was in class ten, I was requested to go to the post office. I had to send something via Speed Post, and I was very hesitant about going there. It was the first time I travelled alone on a bus. I sought help at the post office and ended up completing the task. I could not believe how easy it was. Earlier my interaction was always limited to people in my basti. But, through the constant nudging by my team, I could comfortably travel and became confident about voicing my views.

Shivani: To connect to what Savita and Brajesh have said, these opportunities to do, share, present, reflect or discuss with others are crucial for capacity building. Another important aspect is people’s openness to learn, and that gravely hampers or contributes to their own growth trajectory. The curiosity of our team members has aided them in enhancing their capacities.

Often the need to learn comes through community driven pressure – if you need to respond to community (needs) you need to learn. At Muskaan we have tried to learn through combination of ways – both from training, and through working on the field (experience).

For example, we have been trying to learn about MLE by doing and experimenting. And then a training program by Prof Ramakant Agnihotri helped us understand what MLE is. With these learnings we further developed our understanding on MLE, thinking and working together.

When one works with vulnerable communities one has to keep learning, thinking and reflecting together. There is no standard thing that will work for sure.

Continuously working with communities has allowed individuals to live important milestones of the organization together and build their own learning.

Samuhik Pahal: In your experience, what is the role of communities’ trust in building the capacity of individuals?

Brajesh: Communities start to trust us when they see us responding to their needs. We might go there with some project; but we must address their needs and issues. As parents when they see their children learning they trust us. When there are issues of violence in the community and we stand with them they trust us. When we fight for justice with them, they trust us.

Savita: We view the community as an ally in this journey. When our team is holding classes, they encourage parents to visit their children. The parents trust the team because they always stick around and see how classes are conducted. When parents first-hand see noticeable changes in the learning levels of the children and become confident about our pedagogy, then they organically start trusting the process and the team. That is very empowering for us as individuals and as a team. Sanghwaari and Mazal respond to communities’ concerns. We do not hesitate in raising voices against violence by the police and custodial deaths. Since we remain open to addressing these complex issues, the community has trust in us.

Chandni: There has been a growing trust between members from different castes and tribes living in the basti. Earlier, there used to be conflicts amongst various communities. Muskaan is working on problems of education, violence, etc. Since these problems span across communities, gradually, a feeling of collective solidarity has developed.