Rescue & Rehabilitation

Kalighat, one of the red light districts in Kolkata, is among the most impoverished communities in the metropolis. Children of Kalighat live on the streets while their sex worker mothers entertain clients. Malnutrition and disease are rampant among the children; pubescent daughters are forced into the sex trade, thus perpetuating sex work from generation to generation. Because of its geographical location and easy accessibility, Kolkata has emerged both as a transit point and a destination for many young victims of trafficking. The victims are more often young girls and women from Nepal and Bangladesh and also from the rural districts of West Bengal.
Having developed a successful community project working with sex workers and their children in the Kalighat red light district, New Light recognizes the need to extend its support to the young victims of trafficking through a residential program.

Based and centered on the existing New Light Creche cum Shelter for children of sex workers, a coordinated cluster of services was launched to fight the evil of trafficking and exploitation of young individuals. The central idea of the cluster of services is to rescue and rehabilitate all women and children who have been victims of trafficking and rescued by either New Light directly or by other competent agencies.


Our objectives are to

  • Rescue the victims of trafficking with the help of peer workers or law enforcement agency workers.
  • Provide a safe and secure shelter with a caring environment, basic nutrition and medical care
  • Provide psychological care to overcome the experience of abuse and victimization
  • Provide vocational and entrepreneurship skill training in any chosen field which will provide viable and sustainable livelihood options within the premises of the rescue home
  • Provide repatriation support to the rescued victims and establish liaison with similar organizations working in other areas or countries
  • Bring the traffickers and other perpetrators of this evil to justice

The rescue home (work-in-progress) would be set up in a rural location outside the city of Kolkata in order to minimize the start up and operational costs of the program. The rural set up would also provide greater occupational possibility like organic farming, manufacture of recycled handmade paper, dyeing and printing of textile and traditional embossed leather craft and traditional embroidery. The victims at the end of their stay would be assisted in making a transition from being a learner to an entrepreneur. Our coordinated, multi-pronged approach to improving the quality of life of the victimized population is both scalable and replicable to apply to other communities in Kolkata or elsewhere.