This Amazing Initiative Has Become a Guiding Light For Kids of Kolkata’s Red Light Areas!

As the world observed International Day of the Girl Child recently, here’s a tale of young mothers, their mothers and daughters, and a journey of empowerment, self-realisation and dreams.

For Rina and Tithi (names changed), growing up was all about physical abuse, family violence, hopelessness, despair, and a constant fight against the grim reality that engulfed them, day in and day out.

With their mothers into prostitution, the girls were forced to grow up in an environment fraught with unabated abuse, violence and pain. While Rina learnt to live with an alcoholic father ever-willing to push her into prostitution as well, Tithi grew up with three men whom she called Baba. She met her “biological father” only at the age of 12.

Lives have changed on the dingy bylanes of the city’s most prominent red-light areas in Kalighat, Munshiganj and Kidderpore, all thanks to an intervention programme by Child Rights and You (CRY) and its partner, Diksha.

Weekly sessions with about 10-15 kids in a dingy room started changing mindsets. ‘Adolescent Fertility and Sexuality: Reaching an Informed Choice’, a programme initiated in Kalighat, helped the two girls, then in their early teens, to gain a better understanding of how to handle their situation.

Regular talks on understanding the “self” and making informed choices and decisions helped boost their self-esteem.

Having started as inquisitive participants in these sessions, the girls gradually worked their way to being trainers. They also started motivating other mothers to send their children to the sessions.

Today, they are proud members of Diksha, ready to take up the challenge to create a better, safe and enabling environment for the children of the three red-light areas in the city, something they had been deprived of till the NGO came into their lives.