Do you remember what it was like to be ten years old? You probably have memories of play dates, ice pops, and the Backstreet Boys. M., aged ten, is a girl like you were, except she may be sold into prostitution by her own family. In India, where M. is from, she is part of a subcaste whose women are expected to become prostitutes. With the help of the New Light shelter program, it had seemed that M. would escape this fate, and her education was paid and provided for. She has learned English, excelled in school, and wants to be a doctor. However, her family has just decided to send her home, where she will be far from the help of the program, and most likely sold into prostitution for reasons they will not explain.
Nicolas Kristof, a New York Times travel reporter, has followed M.’s story with America Ferrera in the making of his documentary with Sheryl WuDunn, which is based on their bestselling book Half the Sky. A week earlier, he reported about a police raid on a brothel in Calcutta aided by the International Justice Mission, which rescued 5 girls, ages 5 to 15, from the clutches of their pimps. He reports that Unicef believes about 1.8 million children worldwide enter the sex trade each year. Most of these children work in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Cambodia, but many are in the United States too. International NGOs and local police work hard to rescue these children, but often police forces are simply bribed by pimps to get the girls back. In this day and age, over 200 years since the peak of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, why are so many children facing lives of degradation and poverty?
As collegiettes™, we are often told that the future lies in our hands. We are the most technologically savvy generation, and we have the power to reach all corners of the globe with the click of a button. Women now have the potential to accomplish far more than our fore-mothers ever did, even bypassing men in attendance of law school and medical school. It should be our duty to help our female counterparts on the other side of the globe, allowing her to have the same opportunities we all did. So, we should all be asking ourselves, how can we help? How can we give girls like M. that opportunity to be a doctor, just as we all have our own ambitions?
You can start by signing up for emails from International Justice Mission, which will tell you of things happening around the world and notify you of opportunities to help out. If you like to shop, you could check out UNICEF’s online store,
whose proceeds help the foundation. Help to spread the word of the prevalence of human trafficking by showing a screening of Kristof and WuDenn’s documentary at your school. Perhaps you’d like to help out by volunteering your technological and communication skills—Apne Aap, the women’s organization against sex trafficking who found M., has opportunities available for people of all backgrounds and skill levels.
Let’s all help M. and the millions of children like her. If you had your play dates and ice pops, why can’t they?
SOURCES:
http://www.newlightindia.org/
http://apneaap.org/index.php
http://www.ijm.org/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/opinion/02kristof.html?_r=1&ref=nichol…
http://www.unicef.org/