How do you celebrate your heroes? At Sari Bari, a recent mukti jonmodin (freedom birthday) celebration marked a new beginning for the 5 young women who make up Sari Bari’s first Heroes Campaign trainee cohort. The “aunties” of the Kalighat production unit sat around the new women, giving them words of encouragement and hope for the start of their freedom journeys.
Since the 2015 Heroes Campaign, we have been preparing and waiting with anticipation for this training group. While Sari Bari has always been committed to freedom in the areas of restoration and trafficking prevention through employment, the Heroes Campaign has allowed us to deepen our commitment to freedom by focusing on the prevention of re-trafficking as well. Re-trafficking is when a woman has been trafficked on one occasion, has exited that trafficking situation, but has then later been trafficked again. Read more about re-trafficking here…
The women who have started training have come to Sari Bari through referrals from local rescue and aftercare organizations. Strengthening our partnerships with these local organizations has been vital to our work this year, and we are grateful that through collaborative efforts, we are able ensure that fewer young women remain vulnerable to re-trafficking.
While the mission of freedom and empowerment drive much what we do at Sari Bari, the heart and center of our day-to-day are the women themselves. Their courage and strength on their freedom journeys cause us to remain hope-filled. In this season, we have much renewed hope for our 5 new trainees - young women who are now a part of a sisterhood of heroes!
International Organization for Migration (2010). The causes and consequences of re-trafficking: Evidence from the IOM human trafficking database.
http://saribari.org/2015/08/17/youve-heard-about-trafficking-but-what-about-re-trafficking/