Project Report
| Apr 29, 2013
Interim Narrative Report 2013
Dear Supporters & Well-Wishers,
Many thanks to you for joining hands with us in our journey and standing side by side with us to help mercilessly tortured girls who need our support to build new hope in their painful world and fill their lives with brightness.
Earnest thanks to you for supporting us. Together we have formed solitude to achieve regaining humanity. Nevertheless encountering day-today challenges were not easy as we had to put our lives in danger to achieve the goal. At the same time, your valued contribution has made achievement of goal possible. The fact that seeing smile and love on the faces of these tormented girls, all of us are feel that our efforts have been rewarded well
Our combined efforts of providing more resources and enlarging our endeavors in various different parts of our huge country shall make it possible for more girls to regain their dignity.
These unfortunate girls and children. For reaching such result we shall work in collective and effective way.
On one hand you will develop ways and means of raising resources by being creative in your approach and on the other hand we shall develop more and more effective strategies to attain our goal of rendering democratic lives to more and more girls and help them regain their human rights.
With best regards,
Triveni Acharya
President, Rescue Foundation
Background
Our organization recognizes gender and woman and child rights as a component of human rights. A gender responsive and a right-based approach is a vision and practice of development that ensures fundamental human entitlements – personal, social and economical - in ways that expand choices, and promote human well-being and empowerment. Therefore, a human rights orientation to trafficking must also be responsive to gender differences and disparities.
Rescue Foundation investigates the missing complaints of such girls and also keeps latest information about minor girls in the red light areas of Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. Once it has the evidence it conducts the rescue raids in the brothels and by order of the court it admits the girls into one of three Protective Homes that it runs. This is the most neglected field of work in India. Due to a rampant, deep rooted social stigma in our country, there are very few NGOs attempting to rescue girls from brothels. Rescue Foundation is the biggest NGO in India involved in rescuing about 400 girls annually.
Mission: To prevent and protect children and young adults from trafficking for sexual exploitation at various destination locations in India.
Aims & Objectives
- To investigate and rescue by decreasing the period of exploitation, torture and violence on children and young girls being trafficked into sex trade in Maharashtra;
- To ensure quality post rescue care and support services to the victims of sex trafficking through institutional care;
- To provide safe and protective environment to the girls in order to make them confident and enabling to seek justice in the court of law;
- Proper and quick prosecution and conviction of various actors involved in the trafficking and exploitation of the child/ girl.
- Prepare the girls to move from being a victim to a survivor by becoming socially, psychologically and economically self- sufficient and enabling;
- Appropriate reintegration and rehabilitation of the rescued survivor keeping both the best interests of the girl as well as her right to participation in decisions that impacts her life.
Project Description
Rescue, Rehabilitation and Repatriation of victim girls/women/children of Human Trafficking who are sold for forced prostitution.
Regular Activities
Investigation and Identification:
- We investigate and verify the identity & location of a particular missing complaint or investigation reports regarding existence of minor girls in a particular brothel, complain register by networking NGOs in India (West Bengal and Hyderabad), Nepal and Bangladesh.
- At the time of in-brothel counseling, one particular girl is identified or selected.
- At the time of rescue, we end up rescuing numerous girls as one particular girl counseled by us, in turn counsels her other friends in the brothel who become very willing to be rescued.
- Investigation is a very risky operation as if the investigator is recognized by the brothel keeper as a person associated with us, he gets mercilessly beaten up.
- Investigation is also a very lengthy operation as the investigator cannot visit the brothel frequently. Moreover he needs many visits to conduct in brothel counseling in order to gain trust of the victim.
Rescue:
- We conduct rescue raids accompanied by Police. This is a very risky operation.
- Many times due to leakage of information, mostly minor girls are hidden by the brothel keepers in the hidden cells. These cells are built into the walls and ceilings of the brothels. We locate such cells and liberate the girls hidden in the cells.
- After rescue, the rescued girls are produced in the court within 24 hours by the police.
- The court decides which girls to be handed over to Rescue Foundation for safe custody and rehabilitation.
Rehabilitation:
Health care:
- Once the girls are admitted to our Protective Home, an employed Doctor checks all the girls and treats them for the illness. Almost all are suffering from one disease or the other. They are then taken to a nearby hospital & laboratory for age verification and advanced consultancy & check-ups of blood, urine etc. if necessary.
- All the necessary medicines and consultations are given free of cost.
- Basic treatment for early stage HIV/AIDS is given by us but any advanced treatment is not possible as the cost of consultancy and medication is prohibitively expensive.
- We also are in the process of establishing a Recovery Care Centre for HIV girls at Boisar, 85 kms away from Mumbai for about 25 to 30 HIV patients.
Legal aid:
- We file complaints in court of law and produce them as witnesses. Our employed lawyer assisted by probation officers manages the legal Issues.
- We have been successful in obtaining convictions for brothel keepers and traffickers involving jail sentence for seven years.
- Mock Trials are conducted to train the girls for court procedures and manners.
Vocational training:
- Vocational Training is very important segment of rehabilitation. Besides the basic education, it includes training for Computer operating, Tailoring, Yoga, Crafts, Cooking, Clay making, and Beautician etc.
- We continuously train the girls for several profit making courses so that they can sustain themselves and support their families throughout life after they are repatriated.
Psycho-social training:
- As these girls have undergone inhuman treatment in brothels to force them to prostitute and lose all their humans rights, they are so traumatized that they lose faith in mankind. Therefore they need psycho-social counseling by patient counselors in every stage in life.
Repatriation:
- Mainly after the legal procedures are over we contact either their families or the respective NGO situated in the vicinity of their homes and repatriate the girls accompanied by our two staff members to either their homes or to source NGO. While repatriating we provide them with the day-to-day necessities of life so that they are not inconvenienced during the journey and immediately on reaching the destination.
- Girls that cannot be repatriated due to one reason or other are either absorbed by us or by source NGO or. We find suitable jobs for them in Mumbai.
Wedding:
- We arrange weddings for suitable girls to settle down in life. In India 99% of marriages are arranged marriages.
- Before arranging marriage our President verifies the social & economic status of the bridegroom and his family, Wedding is arranged after we approve the status of family and only after the boy and girl approve one another.
Special Activities
- Project’s objective is to develop the skills of survivors of human trafficking and to train them in various courses to enable them to generate income for sustaining themselves.
- We have innovatively developed various projects like biogas plant, vermicompost plant etc to train the girls about waste recycling, conservation of energy and economizing. These ideas and practical experiences are spread by the girls in their villages in India, Nepal and Bangladesh after repatriation.
- While training girls and developing their skills, we discuss their interests and aptitudes various courses so that they excel in the training, currently the Jewelry Program at Boisar & Mumbai consists of 35 young women in the metalsmithing program, and, four in the beading program consisting of HIV positive, young women residing at on-site hospital. The main goal of the Program is to train the survivors in basic metalsmithing and fabricate production lines.
- We are continuously achieving our objectives of reintegrating trafficked survivors into society. Before repatriating the survivors we ensure that they are healthy & they have developed their skills so that they can generate income for survival.
- We have intensified and increased our investigation at Delhi, Meerut & Allahabad as there are more minor girls being trafficked from Nepal & Bangladesh directly to Delhi, Meerut & Allahabad due to large population of slums these cities are becoming major Hub for distribution & having large red light area.
Staff
Currently The Foundation has a Staff of about 92 members, including the president, a Project Executive, Advocates, Probation Officers, Counselors, Doctors and other administrative staff.
Beneficiaries
The beneficiaries are girls /women /children who are victims of Human Trafficking and are sold for forced prostitution. They have lost all faith on mankind due to the physical & mental Torture in the Brothels as well as intricate brain wash. They are underprivileged and most of them are illiterate.
Statistics from January to March 2013:
Number of Investigations: 55
Number of Rescue Raids: 10
Number of Rescued Girls: 60
Admitted to our Three Home (includes victim transferred from government homes / or by police): 81
Total no. of girls provided Vocational Training are as under:
- Formal Education : 22
- Yoga class : 120
- Craft & Painting : 17
- Tailoring class : 30
- Beauty Parlour : 24
- Computer class : 19
Total Number of Girls Provided with Medical treatment/Checkups:
- General Check up : 139
- T. B Check up : 11
- S.T.I (sexually transmitted Infection) : 14
- H.I.V : 02
- Hospital Visit : 39
Operational Difficulties
- Due to our frequent Raids most of the brothels have split up into small groups & started operating their business from Small apartments, Massage parlors, Dance Bars & small Hotels near Highway (Dhaba), it becomes very difficult for our investigators to trace out a particular girl, as they keep on shifting minor girls from one place to another very frequently.
- Mass Rescue operation increases the flow of girls, we have to accommodate more survivor girls then our Protective Home licensed Capacity, this requires more staffs & Police Protection at our Shelter Home.
- Our Investigation Officer visits brothels at night to verify & do in brothel counseling to the missing girls. At that time they have to be very careful that their identity is not exposed to the brothel keepers. They personify themselves as clients. They also have to take photographs as evidence with hidden cameras. This often becomes extremely dangerous.
- Delhi has a very large influx of minor and major girls trafficked from Nepal, Bangladesh and other parts of India. Delhi, which is Capital of India. A large number of tourists are visiting Delhi. Hence there is good demand of visitors, migrants and local people for sex tourism. This has presented an opportunity to perpetrators to supply minor girls trafficked from other areas, We have now started only investigation & rescue activities at Delhi on a moderate scale to begin with. we are in need to establish a protective home at Delhi as the condition and facilities in Government Homes are not good.
Recommendations
We shall also appreciate your recommending Rescue Foundation to other donors in U.S.A and abroad to strengthen our fund raising efforts.
We request that you kindly visit us. Your visit will enable you to assess our Progress first hand and visualize the opportunities Rescue Foundation has for achieving an enviable position in the field of anti human trafficking and forced prostitution.
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