By Anukrati Saxena | Operations Analyst
Empowering Grassroot Stakeholders to end sex trafficking in India
My Choices Foundation (MCF) is a Hyderabad-based NGO dedicated to ending violence, abuse, and exploitation against women and girls in India. We address two of the most prevalent and difficult forms of abuse - Domestic Violence and Trafficking of young girls for sexual exploitation. We are currently active in 8 states - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and West Bengal. Operation Red Alert is the anti-sex trafficking initiative of My Choices Foundation and works towards the aim of ending large scale trafficking in India by 2025 through PREVENTION.
COVID-19 Relief :
Sex Trafficking particularly thrives in situations where women are uninformed and unaware of what it is and its consequences. They are betrayed, lured, tricked into promises of a good job and a better life. It hugely occurs in rural social-economic backward communities because of profound poverty and economic desperation. Traffickers are always on the lookout for women living in poverty, lacking employment opportunities, and encountering greater socio-economic divides. The COVID 19 pandemic aggravated this situation leading to a pandemic within a pandemic. Addressing the situation, My Choices Foundation conducted awareness programs about domestic violence, sex trafficking, and the safety regulations regarding the COVID 19 pandemic across several vulnerable and remote villages across 8 states. While conducting these programs we were able to identify families in dire need of support and so distributed food packets, masks and other essentials to underprivileged communities.
With the second wave of COVID 19 in India, we plan to distribute 20,000 masks across 200 villages. As part of our safe village programs and COVID awareness activities in the vulnerable villages, these masks will be distributed to the community members. Each village will be allocated INR 500 as a COVID relief and awareness fund, which would add up to INR 1 Lakh for the months of April and May 2021.
How do we make villages safe for communities :
MCF is working on the prevention of sex trafficking across India. We have conducted 5000 Safe Village Programs, spreading information about the prevention and management of sex trafficking. This had led to significant behaviour change amongst the community members. Taking another leap towards the prevention of sex trafficking, we plan to empower vulnerable women of these communities by providing support, training and exposure in turn, decreasing the probability of them being trafficked. Our network of 100 implementing partners and 2000 Gram Mitras, Nodal Teachers and Rakshaks and strong connections with the communities and village leadership is vital to achieving the desired impact. The same network of implementing partners and grassroots stakeholders are also helping in spreading the awareness and support for COVID relief across these villages.
Know more about our Safe Village Program :
The Safe Village Program aims at creating awareness at the grassroots level. The awareness programs focus on engaging various stakeholders of the village and creating a support system for the prevention of sex trafficking.
Empowering Grassroot Stakeholders: To ensure the safety of the villages, we enlist Rakshaks, Gram Mitras, and Nodal Teachers who sustain the awareness of sex trafficking and report cases through our anti-trafficking helpline. Our redefined focus on the prevention of sex trafficking aims at creating a large network at the grassroots and strengthening the support system by continuous engagement, capacity building and appropriate resources.
Anti- Trafficking Helpline: We operate an Anti-Trafficking Helpline: 1800 419 8588 that the community can use to report suspicious activity or suspected trafficking. We receive calls from states like Assam, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh which are vulnerable to trafficking issues. These calls are being managed by our trained counsellors and NGO partners. Our helpline is backed by a strong network of partner NGOs, government bodies, law enforcement, and safe houses.
Radio Programs: As COVID-19 restricted our field programs, we quickly adopted mass media to educate the communities on sex trafficking. These programs proved beneficial when we started receiving calls from people to report instances of trafficking after listening to our awareness programs via radio.
The Glocal Giving Funds have been helpful and are being utilised for the COVID relief and awareness activities and distribution of essentials like masks across all the intervention villages of My Choices Foundation.
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