Want to fight human trafficking? Try throwing a home party that yields economic empowerment.
[Trafficking Monitor: Click on URL at the end of the article to view this and all other images.]
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Typically, the women start arriving, a few at a time, bringing hors d'oeuvres, smiles, sometimes fresh flowers and always cash or credit cards. But this is no Tupperware party. The jewelry, scarves and purses that are shown and sold at these home parties were made by girls and women who had been sex slaves a half a world away. These goods have been brought to the US through the ingenuity and social entrepreneurship of Sarah Symons and her husband John Berger by their anti-slavery nonprofit, The Emancipation Network.
"Anyone can be an abolitionist," says Symons.
This innovative abolitionist model launched with a marketing approach normally associated with shiny pots and plastic storageware to both educate people about the issue of human trafficking and provide a way to directly do something about it. And since it's founding in 2005, the Emancipation Network has grown to include a web-based shopping site and a wholesale operation. The organization has formed partnerships with ten trafficking rescue shelters in Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, India, Uganda, Ukraine and most recently in New York City. In all, about 1,000 people are helped by the Emancipation Network each year — all victims of sexual or human bondage.
The idea is remarkably simple: Provide girls and women who have been rescued from sexual slavery a means of supporting themselves with their own handiwork, promoting their goods through the Internet and home parties. And it was Symons and her husband Berger who put it all together.
As a teenager, Symons was convinced that she would one day run an orphanage in India but her life had taken a far more domestic turn. She and her husband and two young children were living a leafy suburban life on Cape Cod where Berger worked long hours as an investment banker and Symons composed music for television (mostly soap operas). In May 2003, she went to the Tribeca Film Festival in New York to see a film that included one of her compositions when she happened to catch a screening of the Andrew Levine documentary, The Day My God Died, about the human trafficking of women in India and Nepal. Symons was profoundly moved by the plight of girls and women sold, kidnapped or otherwise coerced into brothels and told her husband over dinner that night, "I just saw a movie that is going to change my whole life." And it did.
She started volunteering for the Boston office of the Friends of Maiti Nepal, which raises money for a shelter that rescues former sex slaves in Nepal — she later got a chance to visit the site herself. When Symons asked the director, "How can we help you?" she was told that what the girls and women needed most was a way to be financially independent. The next day, Symons was shown a room full of handbags, scarves and belts that the shelter residents had made for therapy. "Why not sell these?" she asked, but was told there was no market for the items in Nepal because they were far too commonplace. Symons recognized a deep potential for buyers in the states so she brought home $300 worth of handicrafts and discussed with her husband different ways to market the goods. They ultimately decided the home party business was a $1 billion a year industry that could work, especially since it would also be a way to build awareness about the 27 million victims of human trafficking in the world. She placed an order for $5,000 worth of items from the shelter and launched a home party network that would sell them.
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"When I used to talk about human trafficking, people thought I was talking about traffic accidents or drug trafficking," says Symons.
Symonds and Berger soon began to greatly expand their market reach by selling goods from the website and wholesaling products to other retail outlets. They also worked with the shelters to improve quality control and marketability of the handicraft, all with an eye to helping empower the women as they adjust to shelter life away from brothels. More recently, the couple opened its own production center called the Destiny Center in Calcutta, which employs former sex slaves who are transitioning from a shelter to living independently in their own homes. There are 25 people working there now, learning marketable skills.
One of them is 19-year-old Shanti, who has become a team captain, making work assignments and monitoring quality control of the textile handbags, wallets, key chains, coasters, scarves, t-shirts and tablecloths the women make.
"When Shanti first joined us, she was living in a shelter and had been trafficked around age 13 and rescued at 16," says Symons, who travels overseas to visit Emancipation partners about three or four times a year. "She started working for us a year ago and she's now team captain, which is amazing since four years ago she was in a brothel. And she said, 'Just so you know, my goal is to run the Destiny Center some day. I also want to get married and have children, but I want to keep working.' The reason we launched the Destiny Center is to help the women make that final step to reintegration and independence. The journey is complete when they are living independently and have their own income, which takes about six months. It's incredible to see the transformation in these women. When they first arrive, they won't look you in the eye, they are showing signs of trauma — they are very, very fearful and insecure, lacking confidence. But after six months, they have such a sparkle, everyone is laughing, teasing us to sell more [of their work]."
A second Destiny Center is launching in Mumbai that will teach sex trade survivors metalwork and jewelry making, lucrative skills that are mostly dominated by men in India.
And Symons says there is much cause to intervene since there are more and more victims all the time. Some families are so desperately poor they sell their daughters to traffickers. Some are duped with promises of legitimate jobs. Other girls are drugged and kidnapped. The conditions in which they live are deplorable. Beatings, rape, abuse and exploitation are routine, and HIV-infection rates are as high as 80 percent in some Indian red-light districts. Some children born to brothel workers spend their lives under beds while their mothers work. Many women have repeated forced abortions and are put to work hours afterwards. It is hard for them to leave since many have been trafficked from rural areas to the cities and they don’t know how to get back, or they will be rejected by their families, or they don’t speak the language, have no support and don’t know how to get out.
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“In the 1970s, the average age was a woman in her 20s. Now the average age is 11 or 12 and some are as young as 9,” says Symons. “They are so young and so easy to manipulate.” The demand for younger and younger girls is partly a result of AIDS, as customers seek girls that they believe are too young to be infected.
Last month, Symons traveled to New York City to launch the latest Emancipation partnership with GEMS (Girls Empowerment Mentoring Service), a program founded by a Rachel Lloyd, a survivor of the commercial sex trade, that helps American survivors of sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking. A group of as many as ten girls in New York will be launching a jewelry-making business, learning associated skills, and selling their product to Emancipation Network.
"We're looking at hundreds of thousands of women and young ladies across the US impacted by commercial sexual exploitation and entry point is 12 to 14 years of age. These are US citizens, born and raised here, who have been domestically-trafficked, bought and sold across state lines and coerced into the commercial sex industry. Our girls are empowered through social programs like GEMS and that's what we're here for. We encourage other organizations to support us in innovative programs and this was one of those opportunities with Emancipation Network," says Prema Fillipone, GEMS program director.
Their efforts have earned the respect of the State Department's human trafficking division, as well. Former Ambassador Mark Lagon of the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, says, “The Emancipation Network is doing great stuff. The idea of calling attention to an issue and of providing an opportunity for the public to buy products and help get victims on their feet is great. These people have suffered some of the worst degradation, exploitation and dehumanization and The Emancipation Network provides a way for them to renter society, rejoin the mainstream, get good jobs and support themselves by their handiwork. I think this is a great way to make change … The idea is not to regulate, it’s to abolish. Buying these products is the first step … People are always coming up to me and asking, ‘What can I do to help?’ Emancipation Network provides the first step to help a victim.”
Photos and video courtesy of The Emancipation Network.
You Can Help the Emancipation Network End Slavery and Aid Former Sex Slaves - Tonic
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