Girl power confronts the demand for sex-trafficking in India's red-light areas
Bringing out the girl power of daughters of women in prostitution by organizing them into groups that are trained in leadership skills and are mainstreamed into schools so that they have the ability and the power to say no to prostitution.
Sobre ti
Ubicación
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
tu idea
Sector Focus
Civil society
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2002
YouTube Upload
Web site (url)
Posicionamiento de tu iniciativa en el diagrama del mosaico
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Vulnerability of targeted populations
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Increase community resilience
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
This initiative also exposes slavery's hidden role in commerce as the girls' groups expose the profiteers and perpetrators of sexual exploitation by naming them, filing cases against them, and appearing as witnesses in prosecutions against the traffickers.
Name Your Project
Girl power confronts the demand for sex-trafficking in India's red-light areas
Describe Your Idea
Bringing out the girl power of daughters of women in prostitution by organizing them into groups that are trained in leadership skills and are mainstreamed into schools so that they have the ability and the power to say no to prostitution.
Innovación
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Bringing out the girl power of daughters of women in prostitution by organizing them into groups that are trained in leadership skills and are mainstreamed into schools so that they have the ability and the power to say no to prostitution.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
We tap into the girl power in the red-light areas - the desire and the tenacity of teenage girls and their mothers to be protected from inter-generational prostitution. The girls' groups are protected and mentored by the trafficked women's Self Help Groups, which are fostered by Apne Aap. These groups are organized in accessible community centers and provide strength and protection to each other. This combined with legal awareness makes it virtually impossible for traffickers to seduce, lure, trick, coerce or force the girls into prostitution. The girls' groups also act as watchdog groups in the community by providing information on traffickers, acting as witnesses, and protecting other young girls.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
The Delivery model is based on partnership with trafficked women and their children. They receive and deliver their own change. Apne Aap staff acts as a catalyst by opening a safe community center in the red-light area which has a legal cell to provide protection, trained teachers and vocational trainers to create realistic options for women and girls and staff motivators who organize women into membership-based Self Help Groups and their daughters into girls' groups with their own office-bearers. Both the groups protect and mentor each other and learn to speak and listen to each other through Open Mike sessions, dance therapy, and by writing for our newspaper, Red Light Dispatch. These avenues allow them to say no to prostitution and male dominance.
How do you plan to grow your innovation?
We plan to help small communities in red-light areas and slums all over India to start their own Self Help Groups and teenage girls groups by mentoring them with resources, training, advocacy material and linkages to share experiences and find sustainable livelihood options.
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them?
Over the course of Apne Aap's existence, it has created a community for victims and survivors of sex trafficking. This community has been able to stand up to local police and demand more fair treatment because of its organization. This has led to a partnership between Apne Aap and the local authorities that has paved the way to a more formal working relationship with law-enforcement officials and prosecutors in India. Apne Aap's two manuals on confronting trafficking are being used extensively with the help of UNODC by the police and by prosecutors. We also partner with other NGOs in India in the course of our work like ATSEC, Sanlaap, Bhoomika Vihar, Bhoruka Welfare Trust, Deepika Welfare Society, New Savera Foundation, Rescue Foundation, The Emancipation Network India, Bachpan Bachao Andolan and Prayog. For advocacy purposes we partner with Equality Now, Vital Voices Global Partnership, Coalition against Trafficking in Women, Maiti Nepal, Bangladesh National Women's Lawyers' Association and European Women's Lobby.
Impacto
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
The girls' groups, or the Kishori Mandals, are able to say no to prostitution and cannot be coerced, tricked, forced or seduced by any trafficker.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
The unrelenting demand of buyers of prostituted sex for underage girls and the impunity of the profiteers and perpetrators of this crime.
How many people have you served or plan to serve?
We directly serve more than five thousand women and girls and indirectly the twenty-five thousand members of their families. In addition we have served the ten thousand police officers we have trained by enabling them to do their job better in arresting the trafficker and not the victim. Our work has reached out to multiple stakeholder, such as local authorities, education and health officers, politicians, corporate sector members and media who help us in our work.
Directly
We directly reach the 5,500 women and girls who are members of Apne Aap and have been organized into self-help groups and girls' groups. We have also directly reached ten-thousand police officers in Maharashtra, Delhi, Bihar and West Bengal that we have trained to confront the demand to trafficking.
Indirectly
Families of the women and girls are the first indirect beneficiaries of our program since with the change in the woman, the entire family changes and becomes more enabled to lead lives of dignity. The families we affect are at least twenty-five thousand strong. The communities change as each family changes and so we affect the transformation in the communities as well, which then has an impact on the village, town and city. On the whole we already impact more than two-hundred thousand people.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation?
Women from other low-caste communities and red-light areas are approaching us to help them start Self Help Groups and girls' groups in their areas. The girls' groups are doing extremely well in school though they are first generation learners. They are also tracking and profiling traffickers and reporting to the Apne Aap legal cell.
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation?
Members of our girls' groups have been invited to policy development sessions by the Ministry of Women and Child. The groups have also brought out a book called, "The Place Where We Live is Called a Red-Light Area," which is being used as a pilot to develop a larger intervention on art resilience for children in brothel districts. The method is also a pilot for non-institutional care models of rehabilitation where children and girls can be supported without being put into shelters.
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation?
Teenage daughters of women in prostitution and their friends growing up in red-light areas and slums, their mothers, brothers and entire families, and their communities.
Esta presentación se trata de
Sustenibilidad
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
We are being financed by education projects from the government of Bihar under the Sarva Sisksha Abhiyan, UNIFEM, UNODC, US Trafficking in Person's Office, Cents of Relief, Asset, The Emancipation Network, Oak Foundation, Girls Learn Partnership, Shana Alexander Foundation, Ashley Judd and Geneva Global, as well as individual sponsors and donors.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization
Annual Budget:$589619.56
Number of staff: 61
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
The girls' groups can be replicated in any culture and in any country in the world as it is community-owned and led. It is mentored by womens' groups inside vulnerable communities and is cost effective and sustainable as each girl changes and thus becomes the catalyst for further change.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
Donor policy changing before our work is complete, shifting to other issues or other kind of interventions. Our innovation needs to be supported through the full cycle of a girl to adulthood.
La historia
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
The womens' Self Help Groups that we organized in red-light areas began to insist that we have an intervention for their daughters. They wanted to protect their daughters from inter-generational prostitution and so we agreed, based on the assurance by the women that they would mentor the girls' groups. We facilitated the process in our community centers by providing teachers and lawyers who would help with education and legal protection. Additionally we motivated and organized leadership training through art therapy workshops including dance, yoga, music, mime, drawing, poetry and story-telling, as well as writing for Red Light Dispatch and holding Open Mike sessions. This led to further listening and we keep improving our innovation based on what we hear.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material
I completed a Masters in Philosophy in Women's studies from Jadavpur University in Kolkata and did a short research stint in Sanlaap, an anti-trafficking NGO. I spent some time in the Sonagacchi red light district and met many of the under-age girls forced to stay in prostitution by the brothel madams who wanted prostitution to be legalized. I joined Apne Aap Women Worldwide, founded by Ruchira Gupta, which opposed the legalization of prostitution and saw prostitution as violence against women. For the last five years I have been working with women from red-light areas in Bihar and Kolkata, helping them regain their voice and protect their daughters. I am the Project Coordinator and along with my co-worker, Sraboni Sircar, we have been working to empower and create girls' groups as a response to the power of trafficker
Emphasis of Work
Our work links prevention, protection and prosecution. The girls' groups are empowered to say no to prostitution and are thus prevented from inter-generational prostitution. By mainstreaming them into schools and providing legal cells in our community centers, we protect the girls from traffickers and abusers. The legal training that we provide enables the girls to profile traffickers, file complaints and appear as witnesses for prosecutions. Thus our program addresses all of the above.
| Adjunto | Tamaño |
|---|---|
| ApneAapParty[1].jpg | 7.06 KB |
| 100_1973.jpg | 1.02 MB |
| 100_1980.jpg | 909.72 KB |
| 100_1622.jpg | 1.06 MB |
| 100_1373.jpg | 1 MB |
| DSCN0323.jpg | 1.33 MB |
| DSCN0316.jpg | 1.36 MB |
![ApneAapParty[1].jpg](http://cdn.changemakers.com/sites/default/files/ApneAapParty[1].jpg){kind=link}
No hay actividad asociada a esta participación