I have just returned from a 3 week trip to India and Nepal. This was my first chance to visit India in over two years! It was a heart-opening experience that inspired many new ideas and insights. This past year has been a time of tremendous change and growth for HFC. We are all feeling super hopeful and excited, and of course having some growing pains too. Times like these are a great opportunity for reflection and re-imagining, and that was the focus of our team’s work together during the trip.
I started in Kolkata, our headquarters in South Asia, with the majority of our staff (12) and partner organizations (5) based there. Of course, my first stop was our brand new Learning Center, rented in October and renovated to its former glory over the past 5 months. It’s hard to describe the joy and deep satisfaction I felt walking through the doors of this spacious, beautiful, heritage building for the first time.
The process of finding the space, negotiating the lease, contracting for the restoration of the building, design and furnishing, was managed by our Country Director Nafiza, assisted remotely by Amanda and our Board member/interior designer Danielle Hartley. In Soma’s words, it was in such rough shape before, it looked like a haunted house! Our dream was to create from this decaying old building an elevated experience for our girls – a place unlike any other in their lives, that is clean, bright, hopeful and welcoming in every way. Huge shout out to these three for bringing this vision to life!!
I had an idea of what the space would look like, but until I walked through it, I honestly never imagined how it would feel – the oasis that it offers in the middle of a loud, busy, polluted and impoverished red light area. HFC has always made do with small spaces, or we have worked directly in rescue shelters and red light drop in centers (also very small and challenging spaces)
Until now, we never had a place of our own big enough for all our projects and dreams. The Learning Center feels revolutionary, because it means we will be able to serve many more women and girls, and to provide more comprehensive services, from English and computers to baking, art therapy and financial literacy. It is also Kolkata’s first nonprofit co-working space, as we have given rooms in it to three partner organizations, to create joint projects and to expand their own work in this community.
I was greeted with a welcome written in flower petals, with more petals thrown on my head from the second floor balcony (prompting tears of joy) Then, as a team, we walked through each room and shared our vision for what would take place there – a library, a yoga and events room, a professional training kitchen, an outreach center for women in forced prostitution, 3 computer labs, an English language lab, 3 classrooms, 3 counseling rooms, a jewelry studio, offices and more. With a core value of love and respect for all people and our planet, we are committed to the Center being plastic-waste-free and as sustainable as possible. Thus, Maura is creating a waste separation and composting area, and we will be creating our own cleaning supplies from citrus peels!
Because we had not been able to visit India for 2 years and everyone needed time with us, Amanda and I had meetings from morning to night, including some very fun and uplifting site visits – to our Red Light Resource Centers, a project for street children, a girls’ school in the slums, and a rescue shelter. At each place, we enjoyed a joyous reunion, sharing hugs and tears and marveling at how much our girls have grown, and how they managed to weather the tough times of the past 2 years. Our visit to the Nijoloy Shelter Home was particularly special, because we brought our local staff members who themselves grew up in this very shelter. It was very surprising and inspiring for the young girls at the Home to realize that the professional and successful workshop leaders were girls from the very same background. It made their own ambitious dreams feel more tangible. Each day, the weather grew hotter and more humid. By the end of the 10 days, our brains were bursting with new ideas, and our bodies were extremely tired from the hectic pace and heat.
I spent the next week in a quiet and remote village of Nepal at the Freedom School, the polar opposite to my experience in Kolkata. I stayed with, and worked alongside my dear daughter Anjali Tamang, a survivor and anti-trafficking activist who was in HFC programs for many years, and with whom I co-authored a book in 2020. Ever since she was rescued in 2009, Anjali had the dream to open a school in her village to prevent the next generation of girls from being trafficked, and having to suffer as she did. Her dream seemed wildly ambitious when she was 15 and living in a shelter home in Kolkata, but today the dream has become reality, and it is one of the greatest joys of my career to be a part of it.
The Freedom School opened last October and is now educating (or sponsoring the education of) 75 kids ages 3 to 22, including residential students (girls who are at the most imminent risk of trafficking and live too far to walk). This is a community hard hit by trafficking, with 75% of girls either trafficked to India for brothels or domestic labor, or forced into child marriages to avoid them being trafficked.
Anjali is hell-bent on changing the equation, and already the change is visible. Girls from impoverished backgrounds, with sisters, mothers and aunts all in the brothels of India, are instead going to school. Tutoring by Zoom is being offered several times a week. Shout out to Robin Singer, Rosemary Royer and the other amazing volunteer teachers who are helping these girls catch up after years out of school.A highlight of my time in the village was buying books and setting up a children’s library. The kids were beyond excited about all the books!
Anjali is hell-bent on changing the equation, and already the change is visible. Girls from impoverished backgrounds, with sisters, mothers and aunts all in the brothels of India, are instead going to school. Tutoring by Zoom is being offered several times a week. Shout out to Robin Singer, Rosemary Royer and the other amazing volunteer teachers who are helping these girls catch up after years out of school.A highlight of my time in the village was buying books and setting up a children’s library. The kids were beyond excited about all the books!
My final days in Nepal were spent in Kathmandu, visiting our long time partner Apple of God’s Eye. This was a beautiful, full circle experience, because many of our girls at Apple have been with us for a long time, and are now in college, or graduating from college. We have had the joy of supporting them since they were first rescued and brought to the home, and now they are launching into the world as strong, independent, and healed agents of change. They will each create positive change in their own community and society, and that after all, is the whole point of this work. They make our ambitious dreams tangible!
Thanks for listening, and for being a partner and friend on this hard and hopeful journey!
Love, Sarah