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

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Category: General

Why Prevention Matters

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Why Prevention Matters

Staying on top of trends and remaining agile in our approach to end trafficking is essential if we are to combat the traffickers and put an end to their work. We must do more than keep up with their ever-evolving tactics. Operation Red Alert works with over 80 partners across India, with whom we are […]

Staying on top of trends and remaining agile in our approach to end trafficking is essential if we are to combat the traffickers and put an end to their work. We must do more than keep up with their ever-evolving tactics. Operation Red Alert works with over 80 partners across India, with whom we are always learning. In the past year, a report was published by International Justice Mission (IJM). The significant finding of their report was that the number of minors being exploited in red light areas has drastically dropped. What is more important than this exceptional drop, however, is the reason why.

While it is more difficult than ever to find a minor girl in one of India’s red light district brothels, it does not mean that there are fewer of them being exploited. Human trafficking is such a lucrative business that the traffickers are able to earn more and more profit taking less and less risk. Across India, commercial sex exploitation is slowly moving underground, into the private domain. Brothels are being abandoned and traffickers are moving their slaves to upscale lodges, homes in quiet residential areas, communities with high elderly population, and other areas known for safety. It used to be fairly common to spot a young girl working in a red light area. Their presence in specific areas made it much easier to investigate and organise raids to rescue them. Now, it is nearly impossible to locate these girls.

While rescue operations and the process for sustained freedom that follows will always be a critical part of providing justice to survivors, it is not an effective deterrent to the traffickers. We have to invest our efforts where children are vulnerable. We know that the battlefield for freedom is in the rural villages, urban slums, and urban adolescent hotspots where minor aged children are being trafficked in the open simply because their communities do not know how to protect them. Operation Red Alert is on a mission to create Safe Villages and Communities by putting them on Red Alert. Will you join us?

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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Sumaiya’s Story

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  • CATEGORY: OPERATION RED ALERT

Sumaiya’s Story

One day when no one was at home, Sumaiya ran away from her house to the school. She cried and convinced her headmaster to stop this marriage with an unknown man. The headmaster immediately called local Block Development Officer [BDO] and childline. Childline team came to Sumaiya’s home and educated them on the consequences of early child marriage.

SUMAIYA’s STORY

Sumaiya is a 15-year-old who is in her fourth grade in school. She is the youngest of four sisters. Each of her sisters dropped out of school and are heavily involved in domestic labor and household work. Sumaiya comes from a poor Muslim family with parents who are daily wage laborers. Sumaiya’s dream is to be a school teacher.

When HASUS, our Implementing Partner conducted a Safe Village Program in her school, Sumaiya was very attentive in listening to the team. As part of our Safe Village program in school, we also educate adolescent girls on the dangers of early child marriage and explain the physical and mental consequences of it, and how it may lead to sex trafficking.

One day, Sumaiya was informed by her dad that she was going to have an arranged marriage. Sumaiya was in shock and tried really hard to convince her mother that she would like to continue her studies. Her parents were adamant that she marry this unknown man from Mumbai. According to her Father, Sumaiya would be really happy with this handsome man as he earns a good income. Sumaiya was told not to go to school from that day on.

One day when no one was at home, Sumaiya ran away from her house to the school. She cried and convinced her headmaster to stop this marriage with an unknown man. The headmaster immediately called local Block Development Officer [BDO] and childline. Childline team came to Sumaiya’s home and educated them on the consequences of early child marriage.

Childline along with ORA partner HASUS motivated Sumaiya’s family to work for their daughter’s safety and long term happiness.

Now Sumaiya is back in school with her friends. She and her friends decided to stand against child marriage and continue their education in their school – to be Guardian Girls for each other.

It is our vision to see all girls in the village be “guardian girls” for each other, who know that they are VALUABLE, DETERMINED and are on a MISSION.

It is Operation Red Alert’s most critical mission that every girl would know why they should be a guardian girl, what really happens when someone from the city approaches their family and promises a better life, who traffickers are, and how to be on RED ALERT!

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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Red Alert Saves Lives!

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  • CATEGORY: OPERATION RED ALERT

Red Alert Saves Lives!

Big Data Analytics Helps India Nonprofit Prevent Human Trafficking.

Human Trafficking is one of the largest problems the world faces today. But My Choices Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in India, is using big data analytics to help fight it. How are they doing it? With technology partners, effective education and outreach.

Original Announcement on the Cisco Blog Here.

While many organizations work to rescue girls and prosecute the traffickers, Operation Red Alert, a program of My Choices Foundation, is a prevention program designed to help parents, teachers, village leaders and children to understand how the traffickers work so they can block their efforts. Poor village girls are typically targeted by traffickers with promises that the girls are being offered wonderful opportunities for an education, jobs or marriage. But with over 600,000 villages in India, Operation Red Alert needed help to determine which areas were most at risk to prioritize their education efforts.

Check out this video that explains how My Choices Foundation took Big Data and helped make an impact by saving lives.

My Choices Foundation works with Quantium, an Australian analytics company that develops ground-breaking analytical applications that give insights into consumer needs, behaviors, and media consumption by analyzing consumer transaction data. Quantium used Cisco UCS hardware and MapR software to build this robust platform.

Quantium brings together proprietary data, technology and innovative data scientists to enable the development of ground-breaking analytical applications, and develops insights into consumer needs, behaviors, and media consumption by analyzing consumer transaction data. Quantium upgraded its legacy server platform with Cisco® UCS to gain centralized management and the computing power needed to process complex algorithms in a dense, scalable form factor that also reduces power consumption. Cisco Nexus® 9000 switches provide a simplified network with the scalable bandwidth to meet their current and future requirements. The MapR Converged Data Platform enables organizations to create intelligent applications that fully integrate analytics with operational processes in real time. The MapR Platform provides the multi-tenancy, high-speed performance and scale needed to power the Operation Red Alert data platform.

Rigorous testing by Quantium demonstrated that the MapR-Cisco platform decreased query processing time by 92 percent, a performance increase of 12.5 times the legacy platform. With the Cisco-MapR solution, Quantium’s data scientists can design complex queries that run against multi-terabyte data sets and get more accurate results in just minutes rather than hours or days. In addition, the more powerful platform drives innovation because scientists can shorten development time by testing alternative scenarios quickly and accurately.

“UCS gives us the agility that’s key to supporting our iterative approach to analytics,” said Simon Reid, Group Executive for Technology at Quantium. “For example, with the analytics for Operation Red Alert we’re fine-tuning the algorithm, adding more hypothesis and more granular data to improve our predictive capabilities. MapR adds performance security and the ability to segregate multiple data sets from multiple data partners for Operation Red Alert.”

Human Trafficking Statistics

  • Human trafficking is the second largest and fastest growing crime industry in the world today.
  • Every three minutes a girl in India is sold into slavery: the average age is twelve years old.
  • 200,000 Indian children are tricked, kidnapped or coerced into slavery every year.
  • Fewer than one percent of these girls are ever rescued.
  • Public awareness is the most effective barrier to human trafficking.

    • Operation Red Alert

    This post was authored by the Operation Red Alert communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed, and full of hope.

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    Being a Guardian Girl

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    • CATEGORY: OPERATION RED ALERT

    Being a Guardian Girl

    Sadaf’s classmate is a true example of a Guardian girl. She reported the case through our helpline and now Sadaf is back home safe.

    16 year old Sadaf* left her house telling her parents she was going to a school Independence Day celebration, but never came back. Her parents are poor and uneducated and felt there was nothing they could do to search for her.

    Sadaf’s class mate, who had attended an Operation Red Alert (ORA) Safe Village Program (SVP), noticed she had gone missing. She suspected that Sadaf may have been lured to run away with a boy she had been speaking to on the phone. She had learned in the SVP that this is how traffickers often trick girls. Remembering her SVP training, she went to the local village Community Vigilance Committee (CVC).

    The CVC activated the ORA Implementing Partner** (IP) to take up the case. The IP helped the family file an First Information Report (FIR) at their local police station, which caused the whole village to learn about Sadaf’s disappearance. Once the case became news, a local political party started to pressure Sadaf’s parents to withdraw the case.

    It is “well known” among the village and local NGOs that this political party is involved in a trafficking ring, which is one reason Sadaf’s parents felt helpless to work with the police. However, NGOs have lacked hard evidence of victim testimony to push for arrests and prosecutions. The IP counseled the family not to give into pressure, and told them that if they withdrew the case, there would be no follow up from police to find their daughter.

    After just a few days, Sadaf called her parents to say that she had been taken to Bangalore, and would return in 6 months. With the phone number and location in hand, the IP planned to activate the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit to plan a rescue. However, this news reached Sadaf’s trafficker, and caused him to send her back to her village. Once home, Sadaf said that the man had lured her with the promise of marriage and a better life, and once she arrived in Bangalore, he locked her up in a room with a plan to keep her there until he could sell her.

    Sadaf’s trafficker has not yet been arrested. Our implementing partner is working to put together enough evidence to arrest the trafficker, and implicate the local political party for helping run a local trafficking operation. Sadaf is safe, and under the protection of the the IP and her parents, who are now aware of the local traffickers’ methods to lure girls.

    This blog is part of a series sharing from our Impact Report. Read the full report by clicking the button below

    *Victim names changed, and no identifying information used.

    **This Operation Red Alert implementing partner’s identity must remain anonymous due to ongoing casework

    Operation Red Alert

    This post was authored by the Operation Red Alert communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed, and full of hope.

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    First Impact Report

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    First Impact Report

    Operation Red Alert of My Choices Foundation is 3 years old and this is our 1st Impact Report!

    We are thrilled to publish Operation Red Alert’s very first Impact Report. We have come a long way from November 2013, when we began our journey with a workshop investigating gaps in India’s anti-trafficking efforts. We have done 18 months of research on ground and program testing, 4 months of collateral building and more than a year of working with grassroots NGOs and managing India’s first trafficking helpline!

    This Impact Report provides information of our field work, highlights of our work with the grassroots NGOs and helpline management, and critical insights on trafficking trends, field learnings, why we are in certain states in India and stories from the field. Very excitingly, it also provides a look into what’s coming in 2017, including India’s first national, mass-media awareness campaign on sex trafficking.

    Here is a note from our founder

    Many of us know the saying: “It takes a village to raise a child”. What our team carries in our heart and fully believe, is that it not only takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a village to keep a child safe. Especially – a girl child!

    In November 2013 our team embarked on a journey that has forever changed each of our lives. We committed to being a part of the greater “village” whose mission is to keep girls safe. Girls who are trafficked for sexual slavery live a life of extreme abuse and daily rape. Their average age when they are taken is 12 years old and some as young as 6 or 7 years. We cannot have this happen in our “village”, our world. Deciding how to keep our village safe, was a journey …

    Why Prevention

    Only 1% of trafficked girls ever get rescued. Rescue and rehabilitation must happen, but it is able to do very little to end trafficking. At the start of our work, our team dedicated 18-months to exploration and learning. We traveled the width and breadth of India, met with as many of the NGOs that work in this field as we could, and in the process, probably had more cups of Chai than is healthy! Every expert NGO, government worker, and trafficking survivor we spoke to identified the same gap in anti-trafficking efforts – no one was working to systematically prevent trafficking, and there was no coalition organized to work towards the elimination of supply of girls.

    Thus, we have positioned our efforts in the center of that “gap”. We are dedicated to the difficult and often invisible work of prevention. We feel we MUST EQUIP the at-risk villages where girls are coming from to keep the village and its girls safe. There is no other work for us but this.

    Our Research paper

    Close to 90% of girls are trafficked due to the ignorance of their parents, in particular the ignorance of their fathers. This reality is very unique to India. Critical to our initial research phase, we commissioned a research paper by a Mumbai-based Behavioral Architecture firm to try and understand HOW can we change the behavior of the Fathers and the families to NOT to let their girls go.

    Make in India

    I personally love the slogan “Make in India”, and as a team we truly believe that together we can “Make India Safe”. If those who can act, remain inactive, If those who should know better, remain indifferent, and if the voice of justice is silent when it should speak up, then evil will triumph. As a human race we may falter, we may fail, and we sometimes take too long to do what is obviously needed. Yet, ultimately, we DO know deep inside what is right and what is wrong.

    It is all of us, Good Fathers and Informed Mothers of this beautiful country, Guardian Girls and Cool Boys that will keep our girls safe! Collectively, we have the courage and the bravery within us to make India safe.

    We are now 3 years into our commitment to doing everything we can to prevent young girls from being trafficked into a life of sexual slavery. On this journey, we have been exposed to the worst that humanity has to offer. Yet, we have also been strengthened, encouraged and fueled by the stories and lives of hundreds of fathers, mothers and girls who hold a relentless commitment to keep their villages safe. Our goal with this Impact Report is that it gives you a glimpse into this surprising hope. We invite you to join us – will you be #OnRedAlert?

    – Elca Grobler

    We will be publishing the stories from our Impact Report on our blog. However, you can go to our Impact Report and read all our field stories.

    By the end of their stay at our Safe Home, we hope our residents will have found new hope and courage as survivors who are ready to take on a new life with ample support and knowledge.

    Operation Red Alert

    This post was authored by the Operation Red Alert communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed, and full of hope.

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    CVC Strengthening Makes a Difference

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    CVC Strengthening Makes a Difference

    A core mission of our SVPs is to strengthen the local CVC so that it can play its part in preventing trafficking. This story shows how it’s happening!

    CVC Strengthening Makes a Difference

    A core mission of our SVPs is to strengthen the local CVC so that it can play its part in preventing trafficking. This story shows how it’s happening!

    *Radhika is just 14 years old, but she fell in love with 19 year old *Hamad from the neighboring village. They would see each other occasionally when Hamad came to Radhika’s village to visit his uncle. Assuming that their parents would never be for their marriage, the two decided to elope and ran away together.

    Radhika’s village is in the North 24 Parganas of West Bengal. Nearly a year before Radhika went missing, Operation Red Alert had conducted a Safe Village Program in her village. One of the core missions of each SVP is to establish a Community Vigilance Committee (CVC) or strengthen an existing CVC. CVCs exist in villages across the country, having been put together by government programs, but are rarely equipped with up to date training and resources that help them serve their village. However, these Committees have great potential to promote awareness, monitor safety, monitor local police action, and engage NGO services for their communities. Our training equips them with awareness of a range of issues, most importantly trafficking, and the mechanisms through which they can be redressed. In Radhika’s village, Operation Red Alert Implementing Partner ASHA founded the CVC in the village. It is made up of government appointed people who are often over burdened with government schemes. If a village does not have a CVC, we establish a committee which consists socially-driven people who are passionate to help keep their village safe.

    When Radhika went missing, her parents were distraught. Her father is a wage laborer, and her family very poor. Daily survival is already a stress for them, and Radhika’s disappearance was more than they could bear on their own. They turned to the CVC for help.

    The CVC informed Implementing Partner ASHA about the case, and jointly worked towards compiling the facts of the case. Because both Radhika and Hamad are below the legal age of marriage according to the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006, they immediately took the case to the police to file an FIR (first information report). However, the police hesitated to take action, despite the legal requirements for an FIR to be filed, and that all efforts to find the youngsters had been unsuccessful. The police are over burdened with cases, and when they assume that a girl has run away with a known person rather than being taken, they do not file the FIR. The CVC insisted that this case be treated with urgency according to the law because it involves a minor, and the police finally filed the FIR.

    Information of the filing of the FIR spread throughout the villages, and through word of mouth Hamad’s parents found out. They knew that their son would be in trouble if Radhika wasn’t returned safely home. Hamad’s family were able to inform him of the FIR and encourage him to bring Radhika home.

    On November 6th, withing 24 hours of going missing, Radhika and Hamad were returned to their homes, and appeared before the court of the Magistrate at on November 8th to give their testimonies. Radhika gave her statement that she left with Hamad of her own will, having not been coerced or hurt. On the basis of her statement, neither the parents or Hamad were accused of a crime.

    Radhika is now safely back home, and her local CVC is keeping an eye on her to make sure she stays in school. The CVC is also looking out for other girls like Radhika, who might be at risk of child marriage and trafficking. While Radhika was returned home unhurt, the reality is usually a lot darker for girls who leave with men promising love and marriage. It is the most common trick traffickers use to lure girls. 47% of all brides in India are minors. Girls who get married below 18 are at extreme risk of domestic abuse as well as health risks associated with child bearing. Every 10 minutes a girl is trafficked in sexual slavery.

    The horrors of child marriage and sexual trafficking can be stopped by local CVCs who are by definition “vigilant” for their own communities safety. In Radhika’s village, the CVC was able to hold the local police to the standard of the law because of the training of they received in the SVP program conducted by ASHA.

    We could not be more proud of the work our Implementing Partner ASHA is doing in West Bengal, and of the CVC who helped rescue Radhika so that she can stay in school and get married when she is physically and legally ready.

    *Radhika Rescued by ASHA

    *All names have been changed to protect the privacy and anonymity of the minors and their families.

    Operation Red Alert

    This post was authored by the Operation Red Alert communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed, and full of hope.

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    12 year old boy is now ‘home’!

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    12 year old boy is now ‘home’!

    With the help of our networking partner, MBWCWS (Murshidabad Blessing For Women and Children) in West Bengal. Operation Red Alert has successfully found a missing child and reunited him with his parents after 19 days.

    After quarrelling with his siblings who were troubling him, 12 year old Pavan* ran away from his village. His parents did not know how he disappeared and didn’t know how to start looking for him. They didn’t know that Pavan* felt that his home was no longer a safe place and had found his way to Mumbai on a train. His parents searched everywhere but could not find him and did not file an FIR report at the police station.

    After hearing their story, a community member who had attended one of our Safe Village Program in West Bengal reached out to us on the RED ALERT NATIONAL HELPLINE and reported the case to us. Although we’ve intended the helpline to deal with sex trafficking cases in India, we are glad that it has become a ‘household’ number that helps all members of the community in times of difficulties. We see these calls as opportunity to build trust among the communities our Helpline has reached.

    Operation Red Alert team took quick action and got in touch with our partners (Murshidabad Blessing For Women and Children) in a district in West Bengal. MBWCWS immediately took up the case and began the search for Pavan* through their contact in Mumbai. Since the FIR was not filed, it made the process more difficult.

    After 19 days passed, Mumbai Railway Police called the family and told them that they found the boy who was now in a NGO safe home.

    Pavan’s parents were able to verify themselves and establish contact through this NGO and have started the process of bringing him back home! This will take some time as there are a lot of well defined legal formalities to follow.

    Kids like Pavan can easily end up trafficked and are vulnerable to being picked up by gangs and live a life that is poorly guided as they grow into young men. These men are most often the ones who are heavily involved in eve teasing, street harassment and turn into “Johns”(purchasers of sex in brothels).

    The biggest challenge in India is awareness. A vast majority of people are unaware of the fact that millions of their children are being stolen and sold into human trafficking. Many who know about it turn a blind eye out of fear of shame. We take responsibility in educating and equipping communities against the schemes of sex traffickers. One of the ways we do that is through a Safe Village Program. A Safe Village is a 2-day 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.

    In our Cool Boy (Hatke Ladka) workshop, we teach young boys on being a Hatke Ladka by taking a cool boy pledge and it states that a Hatke Ladka makes his village a safer place and will remember his identity and values as a strong young man when he moves to the city. A Cool Boy will do what is honourable and good and is on Red Alert by watching out for signs of trafficking, and he shares his knowledge about it and speaks up when he thinks there might be a problem.

    *Name changed and identifying information excluded for protection of the minor client.

    Operation Red Alert

    This post was authored by the Operation Red Alert communications team. Our mission is to keep you informed, and full of hope.

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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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    12-year-old girl saved from forced marriage

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    • CATEGORY: OPERATION RED ALERT

    12-year-old girl saved from forced marriage

    With the help of The Social Service Centre in Eluru which is a CHILDLINE service provider (Hereafter referred to as CHILDLINE), Operation Red Alert has successfully saved a 12-year-old girl from entering a forced child marriage scheduled to occur on 20 April 2016, in a small village called Racharla, Pentapadu Mandal, Alampuram in Andhra Pradesh. […]

    With the help of The Social Service Centre in Eluru which is a CHILDLINE service provider (Hereafter referred to as CHILDLINE), Operation Red Alert has successfully saved a 12-year-old girl from entering a forced child marriage scheduled to occur on 20 April 2016, in a small village called Racharla, Pentapadu Mandal, Alampuram in Andhra Pradesh.

    During a recent visit to the girl’s village as part of our Safe Villages Program, Operation Red Alert field workers were approached by the young girl who asked for help to have her marriage stopped. She explained that despite being a minor her parents arranged for her to marry a much older man without her consent.  Our on the ground team explained how we would be able to help and called CHILDLINE Eluru for extra support.

    Through extensive community consultation the CHILDLINE team were able to reach a signed agreement between the parents, Sarpanch and a teacher from the local school promising to protect the girl from forced married now and in the future.

    Unfortunately, forced child marriages are all too common in India, particularly in small and remote villages and sadly many young girls do not have the recourse to have these marriages stopped. According to the National Family Health Survey III – NFHS, nearly 45 percent of girls in India will marry before their 18th birthday. This is why CHILDLINE and Operation Red Alert work so hard to bring support and education to communities across India.

    We’re extremely excited to see that our programs are having such an immediate and real affect on the communities that we visit. The Safe Village Program is the result of 18 months intensive research and planning and aims to help people of all literacy levels learn about how to protect themselves and others against sex trafficking and domestic violence.

    During this visit, our team spent two days with the community taking them through a series of fun and interactive workshops targeting all members of the community. They included sessions such as, movie screenings, school programs, village elders and leaders meetings, and fathers and mothers meetings just to name a few.

    The focus of the sessions are not to dictate classic do’s and don’t, but to open up a dialogue about how to speak about tough issues like domestic violence, sex trafficking and in this case forced child marriage.

    If you or someone you know needs help or protection, please call CHILDLINE on 1098 or Operation Red Alert on 1800 419 8588.

    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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    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
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    Helpline Update

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    • CATEGORY: OPERATION RED ALERT

    Helpline Update

    Operation Red Alert launched India’s first National Helpline exclusively for sex trafficking last year in the month of October and the response has been nothing less than overwhelming. We have received over 1,000 calls from 500 unique callers in the past 4 months!

    After 4 months of Safe Village program rollouts advertising our helpline in at risk villages, we are thrilled to share the progress so far. This is an especially exciting update because it is coming to you just 1 week before we start internal training with the incredible Khadijah Faruqui who pioneered the 181 helpline for Women in Distress in under Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dixit.

    We’ll be sharing more about our work with Mrs. Faruqui in April, but you can look at the impact of our Helpline now.

    Operation Red Alert launched India’s first National Helpline exclusively for sex trafficking last year in the month of October and the response has been nothing less than overwhelming.

    We have received over 1,000 calls from 500 unique callers in the past 4 months. The majority of the calls have been to thank us for our work and to verify the helpline. A handful of sex trafficking cases came through the helpline and close to 20 cases were reported directly to our field workers during the Safe Village Program.

    Currently, our helpline (focusing on sex trafficking) is predominantly promoted in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and we will be launching operations in Karnataka in June 2016. We have also gained momentum with our Safe Village Programs and have been successful in completing over 140 safe village programs in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the last 4 months – we are working very closely with the local NGO’s in all of our programs and Safe Village Programs. We also conducted safety programs at the world’s largest tribal gathering for 6 days.

    Awareness Program at the Sammakka Sarakka Jatara 2016! from My Choices Foundation on Vimeo.

    Operation Red Alert’s primary focus is on prevention and raising awareness and we envisage ourselves doing most of our work in the at-risk areas. We have strong relationships with IJM and Justice & Care to which the identified cases are referred to.

    We hope you are as excited about the future of the Red Alert Helpline as we are. Check back or subscribe for updates!

    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.

    DONATE NOW
    I WANT TO DONATE

    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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