The Green Tara Project

Would like to give a big shout out to Belden Press in Algonquin, IL, for giving us such great brochures!  As always, job well done under tight deadline.  Thanks so much for supporting our organization!

You can visit them at:  http://beldenpress.com/

This past week, Google and Interpol presented a concrete way to fight trafficking.  Google is supporting a scanning app that allows consumers to verify products they buy through security features.  How it works:  Consumer (You) scans a security tag on the product.  If the app registers ‘green’, then the product has been verified – it is in the country/store/region it was intended to reach.  However, if it’s ‘red’, then the product likely is in the wrong place, meaning it was ‘trafficked’ and arrived there illegally.  The app registers the instances of ‘verified’ and ‘unverified’ products, developing a map.  Law enforcement, such as Interpol who have been dealing with these problems forever, can then identify the product and its manufacturer, and then start investigating the fraudulent product’s supply chain, putting them on the trail of the perpetrators. Also, once you’ve identified a product as ‘unverified,’ you don’t buy it, which stops your participation in the trade of fraudulent goods.

Why is this important for human trafficking?  Two reasons.  First, human traffickers use the same transport channels that illicit product transporters do.  Second, forced labor also goes into making the unverified (read: counterfeit) products.

For more info on this Google and Interpol effort, read this:  http://m.economictimes.com/tech/internet/google-chief-eric-schmidt-declares-war-on-illicit-networks/articleshow/15026816.cms

For information on contraband (from Angry Birds plush toys to batteries to pharmaceuticals)  and its toll on people and economies, check out YouTube for things like:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Sg5lxVzlo&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL6C6D7AC15C853037

Posted on July 12, 2012 by NNLRJ INDIA

SINDHUPALCHOWK: Sindhupalchowk District Court today sentenced a convict of human trafficking to 170 years in jail, the severest jail term ever served to someone in country’s judicial history. A single bench of Judge Ananta Raj Dumre today handed down the longest jail sentence to Bajir Singh Tamang, 37, of Shikharpur VDC, after a hearing on six different counts of trafficking of women. He was accused of selling six girls to brothels in Agra in India at different times in the past. The court has slapped Tamang with a fine of Rs 13 lakh and Rs 9 lakh compensation to the victims (Rs 1.5 lakh to each). The court set Rs 5 lakh fine and 40-year jail each on FIRs filed by two girls of Chautara, Rs 4 lakh fine and 20-year jail each on FIRs filed by two other victims and Rs 4 lakh fine and 25-year jail each on FIRs filed by two other trafficked girls.

The court verdict read that the judgment was taken as per Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act 2007. The court has also slapped Sukuman Dong of Banskharka with 16 years in jail and a fine of Rs 3.5 lakh and sent Tek Bahadur BK of Nawalpur to 12.5 years in prison with Rs 3 lakh fine in connection with the trafficking cases. Government prosecutors Krishnajung Shah and Darma Abatar Koirala and advocates Bheshram Dhakal and Chandra Kumar Basnet had pleaded on behalf of the victims and sought toughest possible punishment to the human traffickers.

Tamang, with his accomplices, had sold the victims in the brothels between 2007 and 2009 by sweet-talking them that he would sent them abroad and get them jobs in big cities. The girls had later managed to escape the brothels and filed FIRs with the help of Sakti Samuha, an organisation working for victims of human trafficking.The court has put cases of Dawa Tamang of Nawalpur and others, who are also accused of aiding Tamang and are at large, on hold.

We are not alone!  Another northern Illinois organization is finding ways to raise awareness.  Check out their story (http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20120709/submitted/120709893/) and getting your running shoes ready…

At the same time I had embarked on my journey to Bihar, the United Nations issued this disturbing press release (see below).  It does a very good job outlining the challenges facing those who seek to end trafficking.  Also of interest to me in the release are the comments of M. Cherif Bassiouni, an international UN war crimes expert, often called “the Father of International Criminal Law.”  Among his comments is the title of this post.  And so, until there is more being done, the Green Tara Project will persist.

U.N.: 2.4 Million Human Trafficking Victims

April 04, 2012 — The UN crime-fighting office announced that 2.4 million people across the globe are victims of human trafficking at any one time, and 80 percent of them are being exploited as sexual slaves.  Yuri Fedotov, the head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told a daylong General Assembly meeting on trafficking that 17 percent are trafficked to perform forced labor, including in homes and sweat shops.   He said $32 billion is being earned every year by unscrupulous criminals running human trafficking networks, and two out of every three victims are women.  Fighting these criminals “is a challenge of extraordinary proportions,” Fedotov said. “At any one time, 2.4 million people suffer the misery of this humiliating and degrading crime.”

According to Fedotov’s Vienna-based office, only one out of 100 victims of trafficking is ever rescued.  Fedotov called for coordinated local, regional and international responses that balance “progressive and proactive law enforcement” with actions that combat “the market forces driving human trafficking in many destination countries.”

Michelle Bachelet, who heads the new U.N. agency promoting women’s rights and gender equality called UN Women, said “it’s difficult to think of a crime more hideous and shocking than human trafficking. Yet, it is one of the fastest growing and lucrative crimes.”

Actress Mira Sorvino, the U.N. goodwill ambassador against human trafficking, told the meeting that “modern day slavery is bested only by the illegal drug trade for profitability,” but very little money and political will is being spent to combat trafficking.  “Transnational organized crime groups are adding humans to their product lists,” she said. “Satellites reveal the same routes moving them as arms and drugs.”  Sorvino said there is a lack of strong legislation and police training to combat trafficking. Even in the United States “only 10 percent of police stations have any protocol to deal with trafficking,” she said.

M. Cherif Bassiouni, an emeritus law professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said to applause that “there is no human rights subject on which governments have said so much but done so little.”  Laws in most of the world criminalize prostitutes and other victims of trafficking but almost never criminalize the perpetrators “without whom that crime could not be performed,” he said.  Bassiouni said the figure of 2.4 million people trafficked at any time is not reflective of the overall problem because “at the end of 10 years you will have a significantly larger number who have gone through the experience.”

He urged a global reassessment of “who is a victim and who is a criminal” and called for criminalizing not only those on the demand side using trafficked women, children and men, but all those in the chain of supplying trafficking victims.  In addition, Bassiouni said, “we must change attitudes of male-dominated police departments throughout the world who place this type of a crime at the lowest level of their law enforcement priorities.”

General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged donors to contribute to a new trust fund aimed at helping victims of human trafficking.  At the start of the meeting, Fedotov said the U.N. Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of Trafficking had pledges of around $1 million but just $47,000 in contributions, and he urged those who offered money to send their checks.  At the end of the meeting, Al-Nasser announced three new pledges — $200,000 from Australia, $30,000 from Russia, and 30,000 Euros from Luxembourg — and encouraged other U.N. member states to follow their example.

Several recent articles I have come across speak to the issue of human trafficking as not being something that happens ‘over there’ far away from ‘us.’  In fact, human trafficking occurs at an alarming rate in the city I live near:  Chicago.

One of these articles appeared April 6, 2012, and is entitled, “Pimp gets 50 years at dramatic hearing” (full article: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-04-06/news/ct-met-pimping-predator-0406-20120406_1_datqunn-sawyer-prostitute-federal-court).  While the punishment administered is believed to be the toughest ever handed down to a convicted sex trafficker in Chicago’s federal court, what really made me jump for joy were the words U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras said at the sentencing hearing:  “No culture … worth emulation would tolerate this.”

Eloquent.  To the point.  Enough said.

I am always interested to read about females who go against stereotype and are successful.  Today, I came across the story of two sisters who will, for the first time ever, represent India in the Olympics in wrestling.   Things are changing.  How cool is that?

The sport’s roots run so deep that you will find Hindu epics telling of Krishna’s great wrestling bouts with the evil king Kamsa. But underneath the surface, radical changes are under way. The women have arrived.

At last year’s Commonwealth Games in Delhi, a pair of female wrestlers from Haryana claimed medals. Geeta Phogat, who is now 22, won gold; her sister Babita, 20, took silver.

These young women were born in the village of Balali, home to a community of 2,000. They started wrestling when Geeta was 10, and by the time she was 12, they were travelling to neighbouring villages to “get all dirty with boys”, as The Times of India indelicately phrased it. More often than not, they won.

“We became quite famous in our district,” Geeta said. “People came especially to watch us. And I used to love it when we heard them saying, ‘There go the girls who beat boys’.”

The rise of the Phogat sisters is all the more remarkable when you consider the repressive gender politics of northern India. Statistically, Haryana is one of the country’s more affluent states, because of its proximity to Delhi. Yet it is also home to some of the country’s most primitive communities. Female infanticide is so common that, on average, there are just 86 women for every 100 men. In most villages, arranged marriages are the only marriages and women who step outside the system often pay with their lives.

Against this backdrop, Mahavir Singh Phogat, himself a former wrestler, chose to grapple with social convention. Chance played a hand here, for if Singh’s wife Daya had delivered him a son, he would surely have followed the established pattern of village life. He would have left the women to clean the house and milk the cattle in those precious cool hours after dawn, while he went down to the village gym – the akhara – with his boy.

But Mahavir had no son. So he created an akhara in his own house, digging a mud mat where he could train his daughters in the signature moves of kushti – the Hindi word for wrestling. He taught them the bridge, pin and takedown, carrying a stick to underline his authority.

“He was strict when we were training,” said Geeta. “Even when I was doing press-ups on the bricks, he used to get angry with me, saying he wanted me to do more hard work.

“Now Babita and I both have Commonwealth medals, but my father is not yet satisfied. He wants to see us win the Olympics in London. There are three other girls all younger than us in my family – one sister and two cousins – and my father says he can coach them until they reach the same level as us.”

If Mahavir remains stern in the face of his daughters’ success, then the surrounding district of Bhiwani is more easily impressed. When the Phogats returned home from Delhi, they were welcomed by a crowd of 20,000 well-wishers and a fortnight of celebrations.

“We were feted,” said Geeta, “It went on for 10 or 15 days, and people were inviting us to schools, so we could talk to the kids. We told them you can start anything as long as you work hard. Everyone should be allowed to participate in sport, because it helps you to become more confident. That is important for women in India, because we are not always treated as equals.”

There speaks the voice of experience. Today, the Phogat sisters are the toast of Balali, even to the point where their mother was elected as the village head. But their reception was not always so warm.

“Our grandmother used to say that girls should not wrestle,” recalled Geeta. “Some people didn’t even think we should be allowed out of the house. They would say it is a man’s game. They would say that when you wrestle your ears break and a girl should look beautiful so that she can get married.

“But since we won at the Commonwealths, views have changed. Now they say they would like their daughters to be like us. We are proud to be role models.”

And what of husbands? Already relatively old for single women in India, the Phogats say most of their classmates have been paired off. Yet neither shows much inclination to settle down.

“We do want to get married,” said Babita, “but not until we finish wrestling. Fortunately, everyone in our family understands.”

From backwoods to the big city

Three years ago, the Phogat sisters left Balali for the brighter lights of Patiala, a city of two million that stands 100 miles further north in the Punjab. The attraction was the national sports campus, which hosts India’s boxing, fencing and weightlifting teams, as well as a dozen wrestlers.

It is a very different life to the one the sisters once knew. They wrestle on cushioned mats rather than churned mud. They have cars, a black runabout for Babita and a grander silver saloon for Geeta. They study at the local university and receive generous funding from the Mittal Champions Trust, a sporting initiative bankrolled by the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal and run by his son-in-law, Amit Bhatia.

This is a good time to be a trailblazer. India is developing faster than at any time since independence. Stories of female emancipation and class rebellion are everywhere, from the Booker Prize-winning novel White Tiger – which follows the fortunes of a low-caste millionaire – to the parliament of West Bengal, where the firebrand politician Mamata Bannerjee is chief minister.

“Wrestling is changing for the better,” says Sushila Devi, whose son Yogeshwar Dutt is the most decorated wrestler in Haryana. “We see girls training at the akhara now. They will get a good career if they reach the national standard.”

In Haryana, honorary police ranks are bestowed on high-achieving athletes. Geeta has been offered an inspector’s post, while Yogeshwar is already a detective superintendent. And anyone who doubts the benefits of a life in sport should stop in Yogeshwar’s village of Bhainswal, between Delhi and Patiala. The most famous sportsman in the state, he lives with his mother in a two-storey mansion that towers over the hovels of his neighbours. The front wall is decorated with the Olympic rings.

The Phogat sisters can look at Yogeshwar’s grand citadel and see where they might end up. And even if they stumble next summer, other Indian women are likely to swell their country’s feeble tally of 20 Olympic medals. At last year’s Commonwealth Games, over half of India’s 101 medals went to women.

“It is said in India that if your family is hostile, women can end up dead,” explains Prof Ruth Vanita, an authority on gender politics in Haryana. “But if your family backs you, there is nowhere a girl cannot go.”

And that includes the podium in Stratford’s Olympic Park.

I came across this story in Yahoo! News today.  It certainly sums up a huge problem for girls throughout India, and particularly in places like Bihar, and more specifically Forbesgunge and Babuan.  It’s a good thing the government has stepped up and made this happen.  The girls I met in KGBV and Babuan face this very issue.  They will get an education up to grade 9, but schools for grade 10 through 12 are located far from their villages.  And without taking (and passing) grade 12 exams, these girls have no hope of college education.  Amazing the power a single bike can have.  I hope the girls I met get some bikes.

Here’s the full Yahoo! article:

RAMPUR SINGHARA, India (By INDRAJIT SINGH and NIRMALA GEORGE | Associated Press AP) — The daily trip to high school was expensive, long and eventually, too much for Indian teenagerNahid Farzana, who decided she was going to drop out. Then, the state government gave her a bicycle.

Two years later, she is about to graduate from high school and wants to be a teacher.

The eastern state of Bihar has been so successful at keeping teenage girls in school, the bike giveaways have spread to neighboring states. Now the Indian government wants to expand it across the country in hopes it might help improve female literacy.

Before starting the program in 2007, officials in Bihar, one ofIndia’s poorest and least developed states, despaired over how to educate the state’s females, whose literacy rate of 53 percent is more than 20 points below that of its males.

“We found that the high school dropout rate soared when girls reached the ninth grade. This was primarily because there are fewer high schools and girls had to travel longer distances to get to school,” said Anjani Kumar Singh, Bihar’s principal secretary overseeing education.

Poor families could not spare the money for transport, or were reluctant to let girls travel so far away, fearing for their safety.

The program was an instant success, with the number of girls registered in the ninth grade in Bihar’s state schools more than tripling in four years, from 175,000 to 600,000.

“The results are remarkable. The school dropout rate for girls has plunged,” says Singh.

In her crisply starched blue tunic uniform and white scarf, Farzana appears a carefree teenager, proud to have made it into the tenth grade. But she almost did not make it.

Her daily bus fare of 15 rupees (22 cents) to the new high school 6 kilometers (4 miles) from their home in Rampur Singhara village was an additional burden her father, a car mechanic, could not afford.

“I wouldn’t have been able to keep Farzana in school for long,” said Mohammed Shiraz Ahmad, her father.

A teacher told them about the free bicycles, and Farzana applied for the 2,500 rupee ($50) grant to buy the bike.

“The bicycle has changed everything,” Ahmad said.

In remote villages, along dusty potholed lanes surrounded by sheaves of waving wheat, gaggles of school girls can be seen jauntily cycling to school.

The program has also raised the status of girls, who are often seen as a burden in son-obsessed India, where parents have to pay such hefty dowries to marry off their daughters that the family is often indebted for decades.

Now, girls are bringing an asset to the family, Singh said.

Mohammed Jalaluddin, who runs a tea stall in Rampur Singhara, says his daughter’s bike is used by the entire family.

Nizhat Parveen, his 16-year-old daughter, drops her brother at his school on the way to hers. When she returns, the family uses the bicycle for chores, from shopping for groceries to making food deliveries from the tea shop.

Bihar is also giving free school uniforms to girls to keep them in school. The bike grant money is put into a joint bank account in the names of the student and her parents, and school administrators monitor whether the girls buy bicycles and use them, or if the bike is sold and the girl ends up leaving school, Singh said. But mostly, the program operates on the honor system.

While corruption and fraudulent use of state money is rife in India, the Bihar government reports misuse of the bicycle funds is 1 percent.

The results from Bihar were so encouraging that the program has been adopted by the neighboring states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Rajasthan, another state with low female literacy rates, has launched a free bicycle program for girls in secondary and high school.

The federal government is exploring a plan to give bicycles to Muslim girls as their dropout rate is worse than that of other communities.

The bicycle program “has worked very well,” says Syeda Hameed, a member of India’s powerful Planning Commission body.  Hameed said the body is also looking at other factors that affect school attendance by girls in the higher classes, such as the lack of toilets in schools.

In poor families, older girls also leave school to take care of younger siblings while parents work. “This is a persistent problem which tends to push up dropout rates and is a matter of concern,” Hameed said.

But with the bicycle program gaining in popularity, authorities are tightening conditions, demanding students have 75 percent attendance to “earn” their uniforms and the bicycle.

For high school student Parveen, her proudest possession, the free bicycle, has allowed her to dream of even greater things.

“Even college doesn’t seem far away now,” she says.

Though I had to travel an hour (and sometimes longer depending on the tuk-tuk driver) to get to Save Our Sisters, the young ladies I trained there, and their supportive staff, were totally worth the trip.  Here are some photos from some of the classes (note: per SOS request, faces of the girls are not shown, which is really unfortunate because the girls smiled – a lot – and were beautiful doing so.  You are just going to have to take my word for it).

Learning palm strike (Mumbai, 2012).

Knee strike.  The young woman with the huge smile is Nilofar Tole, one of the girls’ Livelihood Coordinators.  (Mumbai, 2012).

Learning hammerfist (Mumbai, 2012).

Hitting focus mits – the girls’ favorite thing to do (Mumbai, 2012).

More knee strikes (with a smiling Savita, another of SOS’ dedicated staff). (Mubai, 2012).

End of class (Mumbai, 2012).

I have been back in the States for a week now.  My mind is still processing the trip and all I experienced on it.  I am conflicted and uplifted, sad and happy.  Overall, this trip was the hardest thing I have ever done.  It taxed me mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.  My personal belief is that I can not grow without a challenge, and by that measure, I have grown a lot through this trip.  Now, what am I going to do with that?

As I look back over the course of the month and the 150 girls I had the pleasure of meeting, I am validated in the vision that has guided me and the efforts of Green Tara Project to date.  Feedback from staff at the organizations was overwhelmingly positive for the result the training was having.  I heard many comments about how the young women and girls who had been trained, even after just one session, experienced an increase in energy and self confidence.  I’ll never forget showing up to my second class with Save Our Sisters and being told that the ladies were practicing the techniques in the bus all the way home…and would I mind telling them not use the techniques on each other.  LOL!  I remember being 5 minutes late to Shishu Bharti, and Lalita Ji telling me the girls had been panicked that I wasn’t coming.  I got one of the highest compliments from Lalita when she told me that she had never seen the girls happier than during and after my classes – high praise when the girls get lessons in music and dancing.  These and other comments will keep me going.

I have learned a lot about what worked in the sessions and what didn’t.  For instance, in regards to the cognitive skill building part, the concepts can be too complex to communicate through demonstration.  I was lucky to have some translation available to me for some of the classes, but I need to make this a priority for next time as these skills are greatly needed.

Shishu Bharti, Project Crayons, and Save Our Sisters all have asked for ongoing self defense programs, and this is what I turn my attention to now.  I am working on concepts that involve my return to India, as well as the development of online support for these and future organizations.

I thank all of my readers for being a part of my journey here, for your words of encouragement and your financial and morale support.  YOU have made my efforts and the results possible.