This summer I have the privilege and opportunity to travel to Kolkata, India to volunteer with New Light.
And I want to preface this post by saying how I want to travel, how I hope to volunteer. And I want to thank my dad for reminding me of this, for grounding me.
I believe it’s always important to be open to others advice, suggestions and experience. I believe it’s a sign of respect before traveling to a new place having done research, having spoken with people who have lived where you’re traveling and again, being open to other’s experience. And then incorporating their advice into your travels.
And I believe in maintaining this philosophy throughout your stay in a foreign culture. I want to remind myself of the importance of always volunteering with no ego, a deep desire to honor and respect the local culture and having the persistent will to learn from those that have lived there their whole life.
Before arriving in Kolkata I made a point of sharing this with New Light. There’s a lot I want to offer but I also plan on learning more than I teach.
I’m hoping to work with them in their shelters and clinics and to teach trauma informed yoga classes and observe the impact it has on the children in the shelters and survivors of human trafficking.
I have a great deal of respect for the work New Light is dedicated to. The mission of New Light is to promote gender equality through education and life-skill training and reduce the harm caused by violence and abuse to women and young children.
“No child, no woman, no human being should be selling their bodies for survival. It’s a shame on our civil society if we allow it to do that. So every person in every corner of this world needs to raise a voice and say this has to stop.” – Urmi Basu
Urmi Basu is the founder of New Light and is dedicated to protecting and educating young girls, children and women at high risk in a red light area of Kolkata, India. After her second husband expressed discomfort with the work she was doing and the issues she was talking about, Basu left her marriage. Using her own savings, she founded New Light in 2000. Her goal is to support and educate these children, particularly the girls, and provide opportunities for them beyond the red light district.
It is every child`s right to grow up in a world that is safe and secure in every aspect. Unfortunately for years the issue of child safety and security has remained a matter of low priority in India. Recent research reveals that fifty percent of all children in India are abused either physically or sexually or both. At New Light the need for a safe shelter could not be more urgent. In the lanes of many red light districts where the mothers need to work in the evenings and sometimes all night long children are often left with indifferent adult supervision or are completely unattended.
Years ago the founder and other members of New Light felt the need to provide a safe and secure shelter for the children of the community which resulted in the creation of a program that began with an evening shelter. The same services today have been extended to all other programs under New Light, which prioritize child safety and security.
New Light not only provides shelter, education and opportunities for the children in the red light district but are also invested in the lives of the women still trapped in the sex industry.
These women may live halfway across the world but their stories, their lives should affect us all. Some sources state that Kolkata’s red-light districts are home to nearly 20,000 female commercial sex workers and their families. According to some others there are more than 60,000 brothel-based women and girls in prostitution in Kolkata. I want people to understand what they have had to endure, continue to endure and for them to recognize these survivor’s immense will and strength.
New Light believes, just as I believe that no woman would choose this life for herself. These women are desperate and simply trying to survive. No one, absolutely no one deserves this life. New Light believes in reminding these women of their inherent worth and of treating them with the respect and dignity they deserve. They believe in reminding them there is always a way out.
New Light has been providing comprehensive healthcare to the entire sex workers community for the past 14 years. They also help provide these women with microcredit loans and have established the Aanchal project which creates alternative, sustainable avenues of employment and income for exited or ready to exit sex workers and other distressed women.
Again, this summer, one component of my work will be teaching yoga classes both for the children in the shelters and young women who were rescued from the red light district at a young age.
The first stage of trauma recovery is safety-within your own body and with others. Survivors need a supportive, structured and consistent environment. The healing of trauma is a natural process that can be accessed through awareness in the body, which a yoga class can do a beautiful job of facilitating.
And even years following abuse and trauma women still struggle with what they’ve been though. Yoga is a wonderful way to relieve stress and tension people may not have even realized they were holding onto in the first place.
Very grateful I have this chance to volunteer with New Light this summer and to learn from them.