Operation Red Alert | A united voice to end large scale sex-trafficking in India by 2025.

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Our Superheroes

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  • CATEGORY: OPERATION RED ALERT

Our Superheroes

This comic book is set in the local context of rural India so that the families we reach can relate to the setting and personalities of the comic characters. Each character has characteristics that make them immediately relatable as well as aspirational. Our approach is to inspire change through affirming and inspiring the good in our readers.

Meet out superheroes!

No, we are not talking about ‘Superman’ or ‘Ironman’, we are talking about our very own superheroes: Good Father, Informed Mother, Young Boy and Young Girl. These are the four characters from our comic book, the Light of a Safe Village!

This comic book is set in the local context of rural India so that the families we reach can relate to the setting and personalities of the comic characters. Each character has characteristics that make them immediately relatable as well as aspirational. Our approach is to inspire change through affirming and inspiring the good in our readers.

Let us give you an elaborate introduction of our characters aka superheroes:

Vijai

The Good Father

Our approach to the fathers is to point out to them that they have the ability to be good fathers and to inspire them to be that Good Father. With our messaging, we also encourage them to keep their daughters in school, make sure their daughters are safe and not to get them married before the legal age. All of these will prevent trafficking.

Jaya

The Informed Mother

The mothers messaging is quite unique, as the role of a woman is many times overlooked in India. In the comic the mother plays an active part in decision making and sharing information. Our messaging to the mothers includes motivating her to speak up when domestic violence, abuse, child marriage or selling a daughter is happening. We encourage them if they ever do need help – we are always there with our Helpline.

Rani

The Guardian Girl

This came from the question- who is the best person to look after a girl? The answer we found was – The girl herself. We want to equip girls to take care of themselves and to take care of their friends.

Rahul

The “Cool” Boy

The Hindi work we use is “Hatke” which means “Different”. Different in a Cool way. We want to encourage the young boys and men that a change starts with them. If they respect girls, the village will be a safe villages for girls.

Vijai, Jaya, Rani and Rahul not only make a Safe Family but a Safe Village!

My Choices Foundation

This post was authored by the My Choices Foundation communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed on the cause, and hopeful that transformation is possible one story at a time.

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Your donations make it possible for us to give families the choice to keep their girls safe from exploitation and violence. Help us educate more families, bring awareness to India and run its first national anti-sex trafficking helpline.

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Awareness is the need of the hour

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  • CATEGORY: OPERATION RED ALERT

Awareness is the need of the hour

The 2-day safe village program is an innovative program designed to help people of all literacy levels to learn about trafficking. We do specific sessions for fathers, mothers, young girls and young boys.

Safe Village Program

90 percent of the girls in sexual slavery were trafficked/tricked into exploitation. The number one challenge in India is awareness. People are simply unaware that millions of their daughters are being stolen and sold into brothels. Those who do know turn a blind eye out of fear or shame.

In order for people to know that, we need to educate and equip girls and communities against the vile tricks of sex traffickers. One of the ways we do that is through our Safe Village Programs. These are 2 day awareness programs we conduct in at-risk villages. This program caters to all the people who could be responsible for the prevention of trafficking of young girls.

The 2-day safe village program is an innovative program designed to help people of all literacy levels to learn about trafficking. We do specific sessions for fathers, mothers, young girls and young boys. We believe that to make the whole village safe, its important that the entire family is aware. Our team works with the local grassroots NGOs so that the program doesn’t end there and has a follow up.

Our initial focus is on the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and West Bengal and have completed over 100 Safe Village Programs in the At-Risk villages here. Our programs will start in Karnataka also from March onwards. We have received over 400 calls on our helpline number from the people of these villages who called not only to appreciate our team but thanking them for their efforts.

My Choices Foundation

This post was authored by the My Choices Foundation communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed on the cause, and hopeful that transformation is possible one story at a time.

Share this story

Donate to Operation Red Alert

Your donations make it possible for us to give families the choice to keep their girls safe from exploitation and violence. Help us educate more families, bring awareness to India and run its first national anti-sex trafficking helpline.

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I WANT TO DONATE

The Light of a Safe Village

Posted on by admin_redalert
  • CATEGORY: OPERATION RED ALERT

The Light of a Safe Village

With 18 months of intensive research we came up with very unique messaging on anti-trafficking and anti-domestic violence. We have moved away from the conventional DO’s and DON’Ts message and developed a positive message approach.

Reaching At-Risk Villages through an Interactive Comic Book: The Light of a Safe Village

The topic of trafficking is not a comfortable one. Its neither a light nor a happy one either. Its a serious message and thats why its tricky to communicate it effectively. Especially, to a crowd that is hearing about it the first time and doesn’t have high levels of literacy. Keeping all these limitations in mind, we recently developed a comic book called, The Light of a Safe Village to communicate the message of trafficking to people in the villages in the most interactive way possible.

With 18 months of intensive research we came up with very unique messaging on anti-trafficking and anti-domestic violence. We have moved away from the conventional DO’s and DON’Ts message and developed a positive message approach. This approach to our messaging was informed by first of its kind research we commissioned from the Behavioral Architects of Final Mile who have worked with the Indian Government, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the UN and many others. The Final Mile research provided many critical insights into the compulsions of men on the supply and demand side, but quite significantly it found that pointing out the inherent and aspirational good that is in all of us is a much more effective and receivable approach than trying to create shock, outrage or anger about an issue.

The Story Behind Our Comic Book

We have used the research and input from many on the ground NGO and partners and came up with a very interactive comic book. We have already developed Volume 1 and distributed it in villages. It has been received with an overwhelmingly positive response from literate school girls and illiterate parents alike!

This comic book series will serve as a tool that will bring awareness about the issue of sex trafficking. The characters become the voice of awareness, not being too shy or too bound by culture to speak about these issues.The characters are easy for the local people to relate to and the graphics are designed so that all people will enjoy them.

We have translated the comic book and flyers into 4 languages and the next 2 are in process. Local language adaptation is necessary because India’s diversity means that literacy comes in 22 major languages with over 720 dialects! We aim to provide each community with resources in their local language.

Watch our work in action!

“Nothing happens just because we are aware of modern day slavery, but nothing will ever happen until we are.” – Gary Haugen

My Choices Foundation

Share this story

Donate to Operation Red Alert

Your donations make it possible for us to give families the choice to keep their girls safe from exploitation and violence. Help us educate more families, bring awareness to India and run its first national anti-sex trafficking helpline.

DONATE NOW
I WANT TO DONATE