Volunteers connect with Kolkata's trafficking survivors

Last week, a group of 8 volunteers from America came to Kolkata. They were from around the US, but had been preparing for this trip for months. The youngest of the group, a senior in highschool, fundraised enough money to pay for the entire trip and to make a donation to our Destiny center! Talk about motivation!

These volunteers have been AMAZING! I'm sure many of you have been reading their blogs, and trying to process the experiences they've been having. Obviously, they are here to be of service to the shelter homes and drop in centers that Destiny supports. But in addition to that, each of them is having a life changing trip, taking in a completely different culture and trying to process it. I can't help but laugh at their stunned faces when they are served food without utensils and told to use their hands. Or when they gasp as our driver swerves around a cow standing lazily in the middle of the road. But at the shelter homes, when they're working with the women and children, they are truly "in the element."

At one shelter home, they've been painting a huge mural of the tree of life. The older teens help paint the animals and flowers, while the younger girls paint in the blue background. At the other drop in center, they've been leading various arts and crafts projects. One of my favorites so far was a quilt project - each child was given a square of fabric to decorate with paint, sequins, and ribbon. Bernadette, who led this project, is taking all the squares to sew into a quilt which will be hung up at the drop in center. We tried our best to keep things organized, but in the end the children took over and each square turned out beautifully unique. 

We just took the volunteers to Darjeeling, where we visited the Himalayan Mountain Institute, Tibetan Refugee Center, Tiger Hill viewpoint (to see the Himalayan mountains at sunrise), and a tea estate. It was so refreshing to get out of the city for a few days and breathe in the cool mountain air. The most amazing part was that Darjeeling has so many fair trade shops and women's coops. Every road we walked on has at least one! So the volunteers had a great time shopping for fair trade Tibetan jewelry, or organic honey, or Buddhist prayer wheel. 

It's been truly amazing to spend time with these volunteers and get to know more about their end of our work - selling the products. We've discussed how many people in the US feel detached from the issue, like it's a problem that exists thousands of miles away and doesn't concern them. But since one our volunteers is from Polaris Project, she was able to talk about US domestic sex trafficking and how the exact same thing does exist (and thrives) in the US. In the end, we decided that we have to follow the advice of Anuradha Koirala, the founder of Maiti Nepal. She said, "First you have to take in each girl as your own daughter. Then the love will pour out naturally from your heart." Without treating each of these girls and young women as our own sisters or daughters, we can never experience the connection needed to fight every day for their freedom.