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The 2024 @DakshanaIndia Annual Report is out!
dakshana.org/wp-content/upl…
In my letter, I mentioned one of our scholars, Ms. Muskan Soni, starting on Page 4. Here is an excerpt:
The state of Madhya Pradesh (MP) has run a small magnet school program known as Super 100 since 2019.
One of the two scholars we accepted in 2024 from the MP Super 100 is Ms. Muskan Soni from Mirgauti village, which is in a remote and desolate corner of the state. Muskan did well enough as a Dakshana Scholar to get a government medical college seat.
In 2017, when Muskan was 10 years old, her father was paralyzed on the right side of his body as a side effect of undiagnosed high blood pressure, diabetes and a lack of proper medical facilities in their village. He lost his ability to provide for his family.
The family was left in dire straits with no income and seven mouths to feed. Muskan’s mother had an old sewing machine and taught sewing to Muskan’s two older sisters. The sisters supplemented these basic tailoring skills with countless hours of watching tailoring videos on YouTube. Both became expert tailors and started offering custom tailoring services in the village. Their uncle bought them a 2nd sewing machine so both sisters could work at the same time. The girls have been able to increase their earnings every year, but it is still only a trickle. The family somehow survives on the less than $2 a day that the girls are able to earn. During the wedding season, this increases to about $4 a day.
The girls have been able to fix both sewing machines themselves whenever they have issues. This too they learnt from watching YouTube videos. Long live YouTube!
Tailoring needs math skills and an above average IQ. Dakshana’s smartest scholar ever is Ashok Kumar Talapatra. Ashok was ranked 63 (out of over a million kids) in the IIT entrance exam and works for Google in Switzerland. Ashok’s father is also a tailor and Ashok is a math whiz. Muskan and her sisters are smart because the parents are smart. However, only Muskan has been able to break through and will become a doctor in a few years. She is the hope of the entire family and has the drive and tenacity to get everyone to the promised land.
The word Muskan means smile. When I recently saw pictures of Muskan and her sisters, what struck me most was the Mona Lisa-like smile each of them had. Beautiful half smiles that masked some of their struggles. In a few years, their daily battles to survive will be over and I look forward to seeing their full, unrestained smiles.
You can help transform the lives of many more Muskans by supporting Dakshana: dakshana.org/donate
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