Mukkamaar

MukkaMaar is a not-for-profit organisation to empower lesser-privileged girls with self-defence training. We train girls through 3-year training program in schools where classes are held twice-a-week through the academic year to ensure it’s a skill that will not escape their minds and bodies long after. We have a collaboration with MCGM (Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai) to implement the program in all of their 1100+ schools. The partnership began in 2018 and we are proud to have renewed it again this year for 2019-20. Our program is made compulsory (we are on every class’ time-table during school hours) for ALL school girls in 6th, 7th & 8th standards. We currently deliver our program to ~2500 girls across 45 Mumbai schools, and aim to have our presence in 2 other states by 2020. Self-defence training (one that combines the physical techniques, assertiveness training and a mindset of agency) arms women with the skills to avoid, deter, interrupt, and resist assault. In order to defend the self, a woman must ‘perceive herself as having value’ over and beyond that of an attacker. Women must first feel ‘entitled’ to be safe and respected. Our program is designed to achieve the above end. Since we started in 2016, we have seen numerous girls, families and communities transform. The girls who thought it’s shameful to even jump in public, are now actively teaching other girls, the mothers who didn’t want to be ousted from the community for allowing their daughters to do ‘manly things like learning self-defence’ are now creating awareness in their community to encourage other girls’ parents, the fathers who wanted to see daughters in the comfort and confine of homes, now take pride in saying, ‘she can take care of herself and come back whenever she wants’. Some of these stories, no realities, even took us by surprise.