Prerna stands as the pioneering organization globally, spearheading transformative initiatives within the red-light districts, aimed at safeguarding the offspring of sex workers and propelling them toward a brighter future through the cornerstone of education.

Need for the Endeavor:

Inhabitants of the RED LIGHT AREAS, especially the children, find themselves denied the very basic rights that are rightfully theirs. The mothers hailing from remote, poverty-stricken villages endure estrangement from their roots and are thrust into the vast metropolis, where they lead lives as sex slaves, bearing the weight of societal stigma.

Project Overview:

The ESP initiative remains steadfast in furnishing educational assistance to children from the triad of Redlight areas, as well as those whose mothers have migrated to the suburbs of Mumbai, Thane, and Raigad districts.

Within this endeavor, youngsters are enrolled in preschools, and their transition to higher learning institutions and vocational training establishments is facilitated. Furthermore, comprehensive support spanning curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular realms is extended.

The project delves into the provision of educational materials, psychosocial counseling, and supplementary inputs for children residing in shelter facilities, ensuring sustained care and protection throughout the project’s Duration.

Effect:

• Prerna’s observance has underscored the transformation of educated children/youth into independent individuals, adept at making responsible decisions, and etching a place for themselves and their mothers in society’s fabric.
• The present generation, under Prerna’s guidance, aspires to excel academically and pursue professions that lend stability to their futures.
• Those nurtured through their scholastic and collegiate journey have become self-reliant contributors to society.
• Many have even liberated their mothers from the clutches of the sex trade.
• Aspirations now encompass pursuits in computer software, social work master’s programs, BSc Nursing, laboratory technology, fashion design, and more.

Project Aims:

• Instill an achievement-oriented mindset through formal education among prostituted mothers and their offspring residing in RLA.
• Counsel and motivate these mothers and children to enroll and persist within the formal education system.
• Foster optimal alignment between children and the education system, fostering regular attendance, preventing dropouts, curbing absenteeism, and minimizing learning stagnation and wastage.
• Augment formal schooling with financial backing, supplementary (remedial) education, specialized instruction, additional coaching, stress and time management training, and life skills education.
• Guarantee children’s physical and mental well-being, while engaging them in professionally designed life skills education to enhance communication, cooperation, collaboration, and essential developmental tools.

Recipient Demographics:

Children born to prostituted mothers within metropolitan red-light districts remain universally and gravely neglected. Their lives brim with tales of suffering, privation, and exploitation. Almost as an unjust, unwritten decree, girls born to such mothers often succumb to commercial sexual exploitation, while boys often fall into roles as pimps, brothel keepers, procurers, or traffickers.

These children, situated at the nadir of the socio-economic hierarchy, have received scant attention from the state or civil society, save for a few exceptions. This childhood is marked by the harshest forms of exploitation, neglect, privation, stigma, and bias. A seemingly unending tunnel characterizes their existence.