An SOS call at the start of lockdown spurred Apne Aap International to reach out to marginalised communities at the bottom of the pyramid. Ruchira Gupta, founder, tells Saimi Sattar that the #1MillionMeals continues to reach out to people
When the lockdown was imposed in March last year, an SOS message was sounded out by a girl who had been sent back from school to her home in the red-light area. Her mother, who had transitioned to daily-wage work, lost all her income and the family was unable to buy food. There were similar messages of hunger from other victims of sex trafficking and their children. The anti-sex trafficking NGO, Apne Aap, launched the #1MillionMeals drive as a rapid response. Its efforts were meant to be a stop-gap till the government set up systems in place for vulnerable women and children. However, it had to continue the food drive indefinitely as there is still no system in place.
Apne Aap has distributed more than 12 million meals among half a million vulnerable women and girls in eight states of India between March 2020 and June 2021. Its intended goal was a million meals for 10,000 victims of sex trafficking and their children in 100 days. It has exceeded its initial target 12 times over and is continuing even after 500 days.
The beneficiaries include people who experience marginalisation on account of their caste, gender, occupation and geographical location. Many of them also face intersecting discrimination. Many of these individuals depended on precarious occupations besides victims of sex trafficking and included agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, fishermen, vegetable sellers, basket-makers, cotton carders, street performers, snake-charmers, cattle herders, coal-miners, plough-cultivators, tea garden labourers and construction site labourers.
Some excerpts from an interview:
What was the initial idea behind the foundation?
To end sex trafficking by creating choices for girls at risk in marginalised communities. We focussed on ending inter-generational prostitution among identified criminal tribes by educating their children and helping their prostituted mothers exit brothels by getting government IDs and accessing government welfare like food, housing and health care.
Initially, the founding 22 prostituted women had four dreams: a) school for their children b) a job with dignity c) a room of their own d) old-age pensions.
Apne Aap rented a room in a Municipal School in a red light area and hired a teacher. Slowly, when the children were ready for school, we formed an Apne Aap mothers circle and together talked and begged the local principal to admit the children. Today, the organsation has helped thousands of children finish school, graduate from college and find jobs. They are looking after themselves and their mothers.
How has it transformed?
With time we named our approach the ‘10 Asset Approach’. An Apne Aap woman or child became independent as they gained 10 assets over a period of one or two years. The assets were a
1) a safe space like access to a community centre
2) education
3) self-confidence through storytelling, dance, kung fu karate
4) political knowledge and ability to talk to authorities
5) government IDs like BPL cards and caste certificates
6) government welfare like ration card, Indira Awas Yojana
7) bank accounts and loans
8) IGP and small business training
9) legal knowledge and support like testifying in court, filing police complaint 10) friendship circles of Apne Aap self-action groups of at least 10 members and the larger network.
This made the women and children stand on their feet and learn how to negotiate without putting them into a home or institution. It changed the place where they lived. This was a slow process but longer-lasting and transformative too. There are red light areas which have become non-red light areas in Bihar due to this effort. The traffickers are in jail, children in school and college and mothers have taken over the houses, turned them into homes and are daily wage earners running small businesses and accessing government welfare.
What has been the reach of the programme? In numbers and area.
We’ve worked in Bihar, Delhi, Maharashtra and West Bengal. We’ve helped more than 20,000 women and children exit prostitution systems since we began work in 2002. We’ve reached the most vulnerable communities who were labelled as criminal tribes under British and were so marginalised that prostitution became their only livelihood.
Recently, when Covid hit in 2020, we found that many of the women had lost all income from daily wage work, their children were sent back from school to the red light area and they slowly began to starve.
We launched a #1MillionMeals food drive. In the last 18 months, we have served more than half a million women and children from red-light areas, refugee camps and migrant camps more than 12 million meals.
Who are the volunteers who have come forward to take on the task?
The maximum volunteers have come forward from the student community. I’ve had a constant stream of volunteers from Ahmedabad University, Jadavpur University, Delhi University in India and Oxford University in the UK. From the US, volunteers from NYU, Hunter, Stanford, Yale, Harvard and University of Washington. The ones who provided on-the-ground support have been retired business owners mostly older women who are helping with our income-generation training like supervising sewing circles.
How is it put into operation?
Our approach for #1MillionMeals is through something called The Human Chain which was created through WhatsApp group starting from factory owners to the girls in the red-light areas, with merchants, transporters, celebrity amplifiers, warehouse owners, NGO leaders, student volunteers, our team of Apne Aap managers and community mobilisers and finally the beneficiaries whom I call ‘The Last Girl’. For me, she is the 13-year-old in a brothel.
What have been the obstacles in implementing the programme, if any?
Logistical issues caused by the lockdowns, like no transportation, shortage of food, a health risk for our workers and constant need for money or food donation. We also faced some corruption and discrimination along the way.
Women cannot be considered a monolith. The problems, I am sure, would have changed depending on the area, age and more. How do you find a customised solution?
The victims of sex trafficking in Kolkata needed food in the form of dry ration most, whereas migrant women needed cooked meals as they were walking along the highway from Delhi. In some cases women needed cash, and in others, they needed to rent a room. In the Sundarbans, they wanted material to rebuild their homes after a bad storm. At other times we had to provide oxygen concentrators.
What does the post-pandemic world mean for women in the workforce?
It's going to be a tough world if we don’t create special economic stimulus packages for the most marginalised women and girls. Send them cheques so that they can make their own decisions on how to restart their lives or manage the crisis they are in. Our government can certainly afford it. Otherwise, the economy will suffer.
If the bottom third suffers, we will all suffer. Covid has taught us that we are interconnected. No lockdown or wall or police control could stop the virus from travelling from one country to another, rich to poor areas, man to woman, adult to children, black to white or upper caste to poor caste. So if someone continues to live in a dirty area with no sewage, remember that the mosquito that breeds there will bite us all. We are linked not ranked.