AFTER-SCHOOL FOR CHILDREN

At Project Mukti we work towards creating safe and nurturing spaces for children to learn, participate, and work with each other. The education programme began as a response to the educational crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Apart from deeply impacting the health and livelihoods of adults, children, especially from marginalised strata, have undergone heightened trauma and loss of nurturing environment needed for learning and well being. The pandemic heightened the hurdles faced by children from multiple marginalities to access and participate in educational activities, resulting in widening of the learning gap, higher dropout rates, increased susceptibility to child labour, and higher risk to abuse and trauma.

The Education Team was conceived in 2020 to respond to the educational crisis worsened by the pandemic by creating an after school programme for children to address the foundational skills in literacy and numeracy using pedagogical approaches that are trauma informed and restorative.

The Foundational Education Programme uses holistic and culturally responsive approaches to building elementary literacy and numeracy skills among first generation learners. Our curriculum is derived from the learning guidelines from NCF 2005 and US Common Core curriculum mapped to the learning standards stated by NCERT. Our program is rooted in building a positive and affirming relationship with learning where children are able to develop attitudes, strategies, and language to self regulate their learning and see schools as a meaningful environment where they can participate and build positive relationships to achieve their future goals.

The Education programme is designed using the principles of Trauma informed and restorative practices to enable healing through learning. We believe that every child has the potential to overcome adversity and develop knowledge, skills and dispositions to transform their existing social circumstances. The programme is centered on building affirming relationships between the facilitator and the learner that aid in developing 5C skills- creativity, capacity to learn, collaboration, communication, and conscience.