What if they had job opportunities in their home villages? With a bridge out of poverty, the path to slavery is blocked.
“A successful entrepreneur is married to a vision and cannot rest until it has transformed all of society.” – Hasina Kharbhih
A young Indian woman who works Northern India, Hasina Kharbhih’s work involves issues like child trafficking, HIV/AIDS intervention, and sustainable livelihood. She first received recognition as a teenager when she was chosen as a Commonwealth Youth Ambassador for Positive Living. She was then selected as an Ashoka fellow because they want to help her in her efforts to spread the Meghalaya Model, an impressive and complete strategy to deal with child trafficking.
Her model is one of the most effective in all of Asia, and involves rescuing and restoring the lives of young girls caught in the web of human trafficking. She also rehabilitates them with job training and professional counseling.
Throwing Back Starfish: Trina Talukdar
Remember the story about throwing back starfish I retold in the first post? Trina Talukdar and her non-profit Kranti is doing just that. She rescues girls from human trafficking and trains them in the career of their choice. Just recently she rehabilitated a seven-year-old girl. (I know, we don’t want to hear it, we don’t want to know, we don’t want to imagine the tortures this little girl faced. But if it was your hometown that lost girl after girl to slavery, wouldn’t you want more people to know and stop this insanely lucrative crime from happening?) The girls paint, sing, attend concerts, visit museums, and are becoming women who will change the world. Trina aptly calls them her Revolutionaries.
We stopped slavery once. It can be done again. This time, it has much more insidious and possibly deeper roots. It’s bigger than the slave trade ever was before.
As we begin to stomp out poverty, you will see a decrease in these types of crimes as well.