Last Girl First

Imagine a 10 year old who is a farmer's daughter in some village. A trafficker comes, tells her father, "You are too poor to marry her. You don't have a dowry. She's young and pretty. I will find her a man in the city. Here's $50 and let me take her away. That way you don't have to worry about her dowry or even feed her at all." And the farmer lets her go. The girl is simply put into the back of a motorcycle of this man. And finds suddenly that she is inside this little lodge, which is locked. And she is told that "You can never go back home. We've paid your father for you." And till she loses count of who she is, where she came from, all her memories wiped out. The first thing we do in Apne Aap is that we create a safe space inside a red-light area inside a slum, which a girl or a woman can easily access. Because that itself takes them out of the place of exploitation. But the next thing we do is that we form them into a group so they find 9 friends where they can talk, laugh, share stories with each other, so the isolation goes away. And they realize that this is not their shame. Then we start a community classroom. We start with the daughters of the women in prostitution, because they definitely want to save their daughters from the same destiny that they had. So we organize them and they access all these things. Starting from the safe space to ending up becoming mainstream. Getting job training, having bank accounts, enrollment for their children in school an adult literacy program that they've been through, and a skill. Savings and inter-loaning among themselves for business planning. The ability to start a small tea store, a grocery store, a something. And turning their lives around.