About The Event
Tinku Khanna and Sahana Dasgupta of Apne Aap Women Worldwide (AAWW), and iconic feminist Gloria Steinem led a tour of 7 American donors through Calcutta’s Sonagachi red-light district, one of the largest in Asia. The area houses several hundred multi-story brothels where an estimated 11,000 girls and women are trapped in prostitution, many of them trafficked into India from neighboring countries. The trip was organized through a partnership between AAWW and Direct Donor Action (DDA), a New York-based initiative that seeks to provide charitable donors with a front-line view of the social issues they seek to address and the impact that their giving has. Steinem, convener of DDA’s Steering Committee, expressed the need to provide donors with an on-the-ground look at sex trafficking in India and AAWW’s efforts to fight it: “So many of the foundations that exist in the US are working top down, but what is necessary is to humanize the process, to not adhere to the old way of organizing but follow the simplest way, which is bottom up,” she said. The visit was concluded at Apne Aap's new Sonagachi Center (inset photo: Gloria Steinem and the other donors) where the Apne Aap field staff answered their queries giving them an increased understanding of the scope of the problem and reinvigorated their commitment to join in the fight against it.
#RedLightAreaRising #Rising4Justice #Solidarity #ActionHeros
About The Organization
Apne Aap Women Worldwide
organizes women in prostitution and caste-based communities trapped in inter-generational prostitution to end sex trafficking in the red-light areas of Bengal, Bihar, Delhi and Haryana in India.
About The Organizer
Apne Aap Women Worldwide
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