Barry Schulman introduced our speaker today, Deepa Willingham, who spoke to the group about human trafficking, especially that of women and girls. Deepa is a past 5240 District Governor and founder of P.A.C.E. (Promise of Assurance To Children Everywhere), which she started in September of 2003 (more on that below).
Peace is not just the lack of war. To achieve peace we have to create a lack of poverty, lack of injustice, lack of hopelessness, and lack of non-human environments. There are 7.5 billion people in the world today, with an estimated 20% of those still living on less than $2/day. One in five are illiterate, with women accounting for two-thirds of that subset. A few sobering statistics:
-2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation
-663 million people lack access to clean water
-700 million girls are married before age 18
-640 million women are illiterate
-250 million children are forced into labor
-62 million girls are not allowed to go to school
-2 million children die in armed conflicts
-300,000 boys are forced to service as child soldiers, and
-2 million children (mostly girls) are sold into trafficking (mostly sex trafficking) each year.
It is estimated that there are 20-30 million slaves in the world today, with an average selling price of $90/person. Human trafficking occurs not just in the third world or developing world, but also right here in the United States. Between 14,500 and 17,500 individuals are trafficked into the U.S. annually. Of those, the highest percentage (46%) is for prostitution, followed by domestic servitude (27%), agricultural work (10%), factory work (5%), and for miscellaneous purposes (12%). The most common places to find slaves in the United States are working at massage parlors, in labor servitude (agricultural, for example), and as au pairs. Locally, along the Highway 101 corridor, slavery is associated with gang activity, the hotel industry, and the farming industry. In the recent past, the Super Bowl has been considered the single largest human trafficking incident in the U.S., with one particular event garnering the largest aggregation of underage girls brought in for sexual exploitation at a single event in the United States.
The original mission of P.A.C.E. was to “nurture the educational, health, nutritional, social and cultural development of girls and women in multiple areas of the planet” by building “the first prototype service center in Piyali Junction to oversee the creation of a sustainable rehabilitation model.” The village of Piyali Junction (outside of Calcutta, India) not only lacked many local resources, but was also one of the largest sex trafficking hubs in India. Deepa began by instituting four pillars as a basis for stopping human trafficking, which are: awareness, prevention, intervention, and restoration. She started it as a school for 25 girls in a rented building, bringing those girls pride, laughter and hope. It has since expanded to a larger building with many more students that provides: 2 meals per day for each student, vigorous academic programs, a science lab, a computer lab, an after school enrichment program, an Annual Sports Day, theater productions, yoga therapy, art therapy, and music therapy to name a few. Additionally, they have the only village Interact Club in all of India! After receiving a financial award, P.A.C.E. was able to build a SAFE (Sanctuary Abode For Education) House with sleeping quarters for those girls who needed such a place (as the school itself did not have those amenities, being only a day school).
After receiving a Rotary Foundation grant, P.A.C.E. has been able to improve the local infrastructure to support the school (clean water, sanitation, health clinics, fruit trees planted, roads constructed, etc.) and raised local family incomes from $1/day up to $3-$5/day. P.A.C.E. serves the community with multiple arms: basic education and literacy, economic and community development, water and sanitation, disease prevention and treatment, maternal and child health, and promoting peace, conflict prevention and resolution. If girls around the world were educated and entered the job market, it would contribute $12 trillion to the global economy!
