By Shana Greene | Co-Executive Director/Village Volunteers
Dear Supporter,
The red light district in Kolkata where New Light operates is one of the largest in India. Over 13,000 prostitutes in Sonagachi are estimated to be HIV positive. This rate is the average in India but unacceptable by any standards as clients often refuse to wear condoms. In the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Nicolas Kristoff, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times interviews Urmi Basu of New Light, Kolkata. His investigations revealed that sex slavery, trafficking, and underage girls were working in brothels sometimes from trafficking and intergenerational prostitution.
Urmi, the founder and Director of New Light is a strong, remarkable woman who nurtures every child as if they were her own. She worries about them and goes to lengths to make sure that the individual child is given a chance to not have to live in a state of abuse and degradation.
She is a tireless fundraiser and every penny goes to providing children with nutritious food, a bed away from the influence of the streets, education, and counseling. The success rate bores out the fact that lives are saved step by step, mile by mile.
Being at New Light is an experience that is never forgotten by those of us who have witnessed the condition and are fortunate enough to have not been born into a family of prostitutes. Before New Light, children had been sleeping under the bed as their mothers entertained clients. Now they have a night shelter where they eat, play, learn, and sleep. If you were to see these precious babies at New Light, you would not know the trauma they could be experiencing.
So, thank you, thank you, thank you for your generosity and understanding of how much impact donations create.
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