Abstract:

One type of rehabilitation education aimed at the victims of forced prostitution (or CSE — Commercial Sex Exploitation) may be called rehabilitation through education. Such a type of education we can find in Apne Aap Women Worldwide (AAWW), a registered charitable trust in India founded in 2002 by Ruchira Gupta, famous activist and fighter against trafficking and rape in India (http://apneaap.org). AAWW has saved more than 20,000 girls and women from CSE and provided them access to education and other basic human rights. AAWW and its President Ruchira has created the unique models and designs of rehabilitation education, which has been highly estimated all over the world, including UN, UNICEF, etc. Apne Aap`s education is aimed at the most vulnerable Indian human beings: female, poor, teenager, low caste, illiterate (‘The Last Girl’, as Ruchira spoke at the UN General Assembly, Sept 27 2017), — in order to convert their lives and consciousness to safeness, freedom and humanistic orientation.

AAWW`s community includes accredited learning centers which provide several educational stages and models. At first, we can name liquidation of illiteracy — for children, girls and women out of red light districts and slums. At second, Apne Aap recruits and sends children from marginalized areas into mainstream school taking in account the educational level of each child. Then we can name the development of life skills: self-defense, maternal and child health, hygiene and nutrition; and leadership skills for participants on relevant social issues.

It also includes job training: organizing women in self-empowerment groups. Extra-curricular classes and supplementary education in a unique design: painting, dance, theatre workshops, and especially storytelling sessions as a cathartic release. These dramatic and broken-hearted stories of former prostitutes compose much content of the Apne Aap`s newspaper “Red Light Despatch” (Delhi, Kolkata, and Forbesganj (Bihar)). This system of rehabilitation education may be considered as a type of trauma-informed therapy and breeding. Gerassi L. and Nichols Andrea (Sex Traffuking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation: Prevention, Advocacy and Trauma-informed Practice. Springer Publishing Company, 2017) described trauma-informed rehabilitation for CSE victims and survivors as well as the necessity of preventive education for them. In case of India, there is plenty of girls and women involved into the inter-generational caste-based prostitution, which is a fatal religious caste-dharma and profession of lower castes for definite category of women from a very young age. So, prostitution and illiteracy interlinked in caste-based society. Traditional religious way of life imposes on girls false shame and guilty to be a female who is a lower person than a male. Through trauma-informed therapy in AAWW`s educational model a girl and a women by exteriorizing trauma (e.g. in “Red Light Despatch” stories) overcomes inner false and discriminative consciousness and gains self-respect, dignity, true-awareness.

In 20 thousand women and girls saved from forced prostitution with the help of Apne Aap`s rehabilitation education had a successful experience, general principles of which need study, spread and implement in other areas and countries beside northern India.
Acknowledgements. The publication was prepared with the support of the “RUDN University Program 5-100”.

Keywords:

Apne Aap (AAWW), Ruchira Gupta, “Red Light Despatch”, women`s discrimination, rehabilitation education, rehabilitation through education, forced prostitution, trauma-informed rehabilitation, caste-based prostitution, caste-dharma.