After 3 years of wonderful work teaching students using the child-centred approach, Reality Gives has decided to close the doors of Muskaan, our kindergarten. “This was a really difficult decision to make, however we saw that we could impact more children through our English Language Support Program in the local public schools,” said Summer Starr, Executive Director or Reality Gives.

Our Kindergarten teachers will become instructors at the local schools. “Because of this we will be able to expand our services to include 2 more classes and about 120 more students.”The English Language Support Program recently finished its first full year of programming in Standards 1 and 2 at Kala Kila Municipal school with amazing results.

“The standard 1 and 2 children are able to speak small dialogues in English and label objects which some students in standard 7 at the same school do not know.” said Lakshmi, headmistress of the English Language Support Program. One big event for the teachers and students was the exhibition about domestic animals.

This next year Reality Gives will expand to standard 3 at Kala Kila and will take on standard 1 at another vernacular school in Dharavi. “We feel that it is important to support the health of vernacular schools. While English may be the language of business in India, the vernacular is the language of the community. Students have more support when they learn in the language of their parents. Our goal is to create truly bilingual education so students have the best of both worlds.”

We thank all of you who have given your support to Muskaan over the years. All of the materials and training will be used in our new programs at the local schools and we look forward to impacting the lives of even more children in Dharavi.