'What changes would you like to see in your life?'
All seven South Asian women started to talk at the same time. They were sex workers. They lived and worked on the streets of South Asia.
Each of them had different stories – the girl to my left had been trafficked from the village when she was seven years old. She went to buy an ice cream one day and never came back. She was sold four times before she ended up working on the street in the city we live in. She has never been back to her village – she is too ashamed.
The girl opposite me had met a man in the village who promised to marry her. He sold her once they came to the city. The girl next to her had worked as a domestic servant when she was six years old. She was abused in one of the homes and then kicked out of the house. She worked on the street to survive after that.
All seven were looking excitedly at us as they spoke. What things did they think that they needed in their life?
'We need love. On the streets no-one loves us.'
'We need education. I can’t even write my own name. No-one has ever taught me. How can people respect us?'
'We need love. On the streets no-one loves us. No-one respects us. They say that we are bad women.'
'We need a new mind. We are trapped into bad thinking. We think that we are not able to do any other kind of work. We think that we are bad women and that we don’t deserve any other sort of life. We don’t help ourselves. We don’t help each other.'
A Place of Help and Hope
Armed with the research gathered from these and other powerful conversations, the staff of the Children’s Uplift Programme is made plans to open a drop-in centre in early 2009 where homeless girls living on the streets of Bangladesh can come to receive care, respect, and hope.
There are an estimated 249,200 children working without adult supervision on the streets of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. Approximately 15% of these children are homeless without their families.
Many of the homeless girls have been sexually exploited and are at a high risk of becoming sex workers. The centre will give girls a safe place to go during the day and will provide holistic services to meet their needs.
