New Light

I have a great deal of respect for the work the New Light Foundation 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. What comes as a shock is that fifty four percent of those are boys. As is the case with many other social evils the ugly head of child abuse and molestation remained covered in the shroud of denial for the longest time. 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 try to guarantee highest level of child safety and security.

New Light not only provides shelter, education and opportunities for the children in the red light district but is also deeply invested in the lives of the women still trapped in the trafficking world.

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 provide these women with microcredit loans, shelter and a chance to be listened to and understood in the support groups fellow survivors help facilitate.

This summer I will have the opportunity to volunteer with them in their shelters and clinics and to teach trauma informed yoga classes and research the impact it has on the children in the shelters and the survivors of human trafficking.

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.

At the end of every class I will have all of us to end in a circle. I want to acknowledge we are all doing the practice together and I am simply leading them through a practice that they are in control of, have a say in how it’s run and which is making them into stronger women.

And I will also take time at the end of class for everyone to speak if they’d like. Share in what way they feel more relaxed, what they were able to work through or why they feel stronger, more peaceful or more balanced. I want to welcome them to share anything they would like because they are in a supportive, loving, non-judgmental environment.

And each class will end with Namaste. And when I say Namaste I return to its purpose, its core intention. I bow to you. I bring my palms together, my hands to my heart chakra, the wellspring of compassion in all of us, and I honor that place. That place we all share and that has such great capacity for good, for selflessness, for simple, true kindness.

I plan on learning more than I teach. I believe when you first begin volunteering or providing aid in a foreign culture you need to come in with no ego, a deep desire to honor and respect the local culture and the will to learn from those that have lived there their whole lives.

More than anything, it will be an honor and a privilege to work with survivors of human trafficking and their children in Kolkata this summer.