Support our vital work of empowering marginalized women & children in
South Asia.
350,000
WE REACHED UP TO 350,000
PEOPLE PER YEAR
15,000
GIRLS PER YEAR IN SCHOOL
AND OUT OF CHILD MARRIAGE
50,000
FAMILIES PER YEAR
PROTECTED FROM EXPLOITATION
Support our vital work of empowering marginalized women & children in
South Asia.
Due to their social status, Mamta and her husband were daily-wage labourers. A dangerous, gruelling, and unreliable means of earning, they were forced to find work wherever they could for meagre salaries so that they could feed themselves and their families.
When a persuasive and charming man found her and offered her a distinguished and well-paying job elsewhere, she felt she had to go, for the sake of her children.
The man was a trafficker. Predators like him thrive in a crisis, preying on the most vulnerable, poorest, and desperate of Indian society. After unassumingly agreeing to go with him, he sold Mamta into sex work for 2 Lakh rupees (less than £2,000).
It took a year before Mamta was able to escape and find her family again. Yet, in spite of the unthinkable trauma that she had endured throughout the abuse and the separation from her family, her indignity was only beginning.
Like so many women survivors in India, a country embedded in deep-rooted patriarchal values, Mamta’s family blamed her for her own rape and kidnapping. Rather than being welcomed, she was beaten by her husband, disowned by her father, and shunned by her village.
When she contacted the police, they refused to take her seriously or file a police report. Eventually she was driven out of the house in shame and became homeless, spending her nights at a railway station.
Mamta’s story reached our project coordinators, whose close community ties allow them to seek out women in need. Legal professionals were able to provide her with the support she needed to properly file her case, ensuring that she could seek justice.
While it could not mend the damage done by her family, the project could give Mamta a new start. She was provided training in entrepreneurship, business, and dignified livelihood skills. With those skills, Mamta was able to open her own sewing business and become independent for the first time in her life.
“Today, I am alive because of this project,” Mamta says. “The members of the project are my family.”
