From a Muslim mom’s heart
It all started with an aim to help my son learn about Islam and be confident about his Muslim identity. I am a proud Muslim mom, living in the US, raising my son to be part of the American society and being a good Muslim as well. The turning point came last year during holiday times, when my son was exposed to almost every event on the list of USA holidays – be it Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas. While inter-cultural dialogue is a great source of inspiration and growth, I could not help but notice that our own Muslim holidays were represented much less. We had invites from friends to come over and celebrate, we received such delightful goodies, had fantastic decorations to see in the malls and some of the festivities were just pure fun to do! I noticed a common pattern among all these events: there was always something for the kids to be excited about. They were interested in learning more about that event and were looking forward to celebrating it with their friends as well. So, that got me thinking: how can I make the Muslim events exciting and fun for my child so that he is interested in learning and celebrating them too? This way, the more things my child got exposed to, the more he would learn about them and be confident about them being a part of him.
An idea that sparked a creation
In my search for fun ways to encourage my son to learn about Muslim events, I had high expectations. I wanted to find activities and goodies that would develop and strengthen his motor and intellectual skills and creativity, and be appropriate for his development stage, interests, age and gender. I found some good options over the Internet but they were scattered all over the place, making the buying process cumbersome and overwhelming. So, I did the next best thing I knew. I went about creating a small collection of goodies for him around the Ramadan event myself! When my friends got to know about it, they were super excited and requested that I curate something similar for their kids. From their feedback, I realized there were so many well-intended parents out there who want the same for their kids. So, in order to have this available to other parents, the Lunar Joy Box subscription was born!
What is Lunar Joy Box and how does it help Muslim Kids?
Which kid doesn’t like receiving gifts? The Lunar Joy Box is just like that gift that comes to your door through an event-based subscription for kids 0-8 years.
We officially launched on May, 8th 2018 and Lunar Joy Box is currently available for 3 Muslim events: Ramadan, Eid and Hajj. Each box comes with 6-8 goodies that are geared towards learning about a particular Muslim event through activities that develop or strengthen creativity, intellectual and motor skills. Each box can be customized for gender and age, so that your Lunar Joy Box can arrive curated specifically for little boys and little girls. Furthermore, each box contains at least two goodies that your child can share with his friends. After all, how can our children really celebrate when they can’t share their joy with their loved ones?
We hope to curate Lunar Joy Box for other Muslim events and bring cultural uniqueness to our future boxes.