Ashley Judd, Gloria Steinem raise funds for marginalized women in India
ASHLEY JUDD, GLORIA STEINEM RAISE FUNDS FOR APNE AAP, WHICH EMPOWERS WOMEN IN INDIA TO RESIST SEX TRAFFICKING.
This article, first published October 10, 2021, is being re-published since Global Indian Times has also begun posting on Substack.
https://www.globalindiantimes.com/globalindiantimes/2021/10/10/ashley-judd-apne-aap
Ashley Judd, Hollywood actor
October 10, 2021
This evening at 7 pm, New York time, Ashley Judd and Rosanna Arquette, both Hollywood actors, and Gloria Steinem, author, will co-chair The Last Girl Benefit. It is an online fundraiser organized by Apne Aap, (On one’s own), a New York-based philanthropy, which raises funds to empower marginalized girls and women in India “to resist and end sex trafficking.”
Other speakers at the benefit include Reshma Shetty, actor, Catherine MacKinnon, who teaches at the University of Michigan Law School, Ruchira Gupta, co-founder of Apne Aap who teaches at New York University, and Basu Ratnam, who runs Inday, three Ayurvedic based restaurants in New York City. Zila Khan, a sufi singer, will perform.
As a journalist working in Nepal, Gupta noticed and asked about the number of girls and women missing from villages. When told “they are all in Mumbai,” she discovered there was a supply chain between Nepal and Mumbai that included “the local village procurer, the corrupt border guard, the transporter, the pimp, the brothel manager, the money lender, the landlord and finally the customer.”
Gupta’s 1996 Emmy award winning documentary, The Selling of Innocents, (a still in photo) was about the trafficking of girls and women from Nepal to India. The women from the red-light district in Mumbai formed a bond during the making of the documentary and found in each other the strength to rebel against their condition.
After the documentary shoot was over, the group continued to meet in parks. The respect they received when acting as a group and the strength of their collective bargaining inspired 22 of them to join Gupta in creating Apne Aap in 2002. They shared a vision of a world where no woman would be bought or sold.
A member of Apne Aap’s board secured a room in an abandoned municipal school in the red-light district. It was a safe space for the women to talk, sleep, bathe and receive mail. Gradually, it evolved into a venue for meetings and classes.
Though the 22 co-founders from Mumbai’s red light district have all passed — of hunger, suicide or of AIDS-related complications — their vision lives on.
Apne Aap has set up 150 similar safe spaces in brothels, red-light districts, slums and villages, in Bihar, Delhi and West Bengal, and reached out to other women trapped in prostitution. Self-empowerment groups meet at the community centers, enabling thousands of girls and women to come together, access education, improve livelihood options and receive legal rights training.
On the policy side, Apne Aap has successfully lobbied for a United Nation’s anti-trafficking fund for survivors. The fund disburses grants to organizations providing services to victims of trafficking. Apne Aap partners with organizations such as NoVo Foundation, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Equality Now to push for an end to sex trafficking.
Actor, social activist, UN goodwill ambassador Ashley Judd has 356,000 followers on Twitter and 531,000 on Instagram. This morning she tweeted about today’s benefit: “Time is running out! Register for our Last Girl Awards…Proceeds go to (Apne Aap’s) #1millionmeals” campaign.
(c) All rights reserved. Copyright under United States Laws.