Sarah Symons's blog

Girls who were denied their childhood need all the tools and enrichments we can offer them,  in order to become strong, independent adults.  This spring we launched a new program in partnership with Senhoa and Womens Interlink Foundation, offering jewelry training – for therapeutic purposes rather than employment – and an innovative life skills curriculum for school-going survivors, addressing such issues as relationships, hygiene, self-esteem, health and women’s rights . Because education is our number one priority for younger survivors,

Tuesday I spent the day at the Nijoloy shelter outside Calcutta, drawing and playing and sketching in a mural map of the world. The children look forward to our twice-yearly volunteer visits with tremendous enthusiasm. Unlike the busy and heroic shelter housemothers, the volunteers have nothing more important to do right now than to hug the girls, to hold their hands and dance around the courtyard, Growing up in a shelter home, or raised by mothers who are beaten down by a life spent in forced prostitution, the children are very hungry for affection.

All year long I've shared - in my blog, newsletters, and on our website - how I feel about slavery and about our girls' incredible potential.  Now you can hear what the survivors themselves have to say.   The quotes below come from women and children in our jobs and school sponsorship programs, and members of communities hardest hit by slavery.  Learn what matters to former slaves, and what they want you to know about them, their dreams, and how we should go about ending slavery forever:

 “First you have to take them into your heart as your own child.  Then the strength comes out of you to protect them”   Anuradha Koirala.  

Anuradha  Koirala, founder of Maiti Nepal   (our first parner shelter) has been won a CNN Heroes Award, which she richly deserves to win – Anuradha is a true hero for our times.   I first met Anuradha in 2004, when I visited her  Kathmandu shelter along with Joe Collins and Brigitte Cazalis Collins of Friends of Maiti Nepal, the US arm of Maiti Nepal, with whom I volunteered for a year when I first became involved in anti-trafficking work.  This amazing trip changed my life forever. In fact, it was Anuradha who planted the seed for the creation of The Emancipation Network, when I asked her what kind of help she needed most at that moment. 

 In August, we visited seven villages in Uttar Pradesh, India, including the site of our own Freedom School, where 52 school sponsored children are now out of slavery and receiving top quality education.  We were led by Bhanuja Sharan, the Director of regional partner agency MSEMVS.  Many of the men, women and children in these villages have been rescued by MSEMVS from bonded labor slavery, in agriculture, brick kilns, stone quarries and carpet looms.