VITAL
D nate
Red Light District Project
Our Red Light District Project provides protection, counselling and schooling to over 500 children living in dangerous red light areas where there is a high concentration of hazardous sex work, human trafficking and rampant child protection abuses.
Success! Through our support for over 11 years now, NO child has followed their parents' footsteps into second-generation prostitution!
We are proud to announce that the Eleanor Rathbone Charitable Trust have also granted us £1,000 for this project (March 2019)!
Success: Since we began the project 9 years ago no child has followed their mothers' footsteps into second generation prostitution
What we do
We partner with CINI and together we work day and night to ensure that no child is left on the streets, nor taken into a brothel, while their parents work in the district. Cases of abuse, which are common in the area, leave the children prey to trafficking, being forced into commercial sexual exploitation and extremely vulnerable. This system prevents cases of trafficking and child protection abuses, by providing:
Basic healthcare services and intensive counselling, including through psycho-social therapy
Therapeutic and recreational activities alongside standard after school and evening classes
Monthly mothers' meetings and house visits to provide them with the knowledge to support their children's education and well-being
Choosing the project
In 2017, the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development reported that West Bengal accounted for over a third of all cases of trafficking in India in 2016. Located within an area constituting an extension of Asia’s largest red light area, Sonagachi, our project seeks to circumvent second-generation prostitution. The children living in these red light areas are among the most vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Their environments are riddled with drugs, violence, alcohol, child marriage and child trafficking. Many of the children are traumatised and suffer from low self-esteem, hence counselling plays an essential role in our project to restore their childhoods and well-being.
