It is estimated that there are 10 million women and girls in prostitution in India; many of them held captive in India’s brothels where violent beatings, rape and even death is a daily reality. These women and girls have been trafficked – tricked or kidnapped and coerced into sexual slavery. Most of these girls were sold by their parents. Poor village girls are typically targeted, with promises of schooling, jobs or marriage. Parents do not have the means or knowledge to protect their daughters. Preventing trafficking is impossible if we do not educate the families and villages that traffickers are targeting. In India, most families have no idea that their girls are being taken and sold into sexual exploitation. Most NGO's efforts are spent in the rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked girls. The Operation Red Alert Safe Village Program is reaching the highest risk and most vulnerable villages around India, teaching families how to keep their daughters safe.

Operation Red Alert partners with local NGO’s that work on issues of women and trafficking, trains them on the Safe Village Programs, and appoints them as official “Implementing Partners”. These Implementing Partners conduct Safe Village Programs under the management of Operation Red Alert. Only the staff who have been trained by ORA are eligible to conduct these programs.

The Safe Village program:-

 Safe Village Program is a holistic program aimed at:

• Sensitizing at-risk community members on human trafficking and its causes and risk factors
• Creating awareness about ways to prevent trafficking
• Sustaining awareness levels and empowering the community

There are four stages in a Safe Village Program:

• Planning
• Pre-visit
• Two days of the SVP Program
• Follow Up

Pre-visit:

The pre-visit involves visiting the village, collecting data to get a deeper assessment of vulnerability/trafficking risks at the village-level.

SVP Day 1:

• School Session to educate Adolescent Boys and Girls where students perform a skit on awareness about child abuse and child marriages.
• Comic Book reading
• Show movies about sex trafficking at schools and public places; awareness of POCSO Act in schools
• Interaction with village leaders and school officials
• Sessions with parental groups (fathers and mothers separately) to create awareness on sex trafficking and distribute materials (flyers, comic books)
• Familiarize the children with the ORA Helpline
• Enroll a Nodal Teacher and a Rakshak – who will eventually be the nodal points of contact and through whom the ORA will sustain the community awareness levels.

SVP Day 2:

• Catchup with parents and community People
• Follow up with school officials and students and take feedback
• Appoint a Rakshak and a Nodal Teacher [who will continue the efforts of the first day] in every village that we conduct SVP in
• Initiate Helpline calls from the community and assist in forming of Gram Mitras

Follow Up:

Case follow-up: Follow up with police and other authorities regarding cases that come up via their ORA helpline.

• Support provided in the form of village volunteers and a toll-free helpline that are constantly available for the people to enquire, report an issue and seek help.
• Increase in the capacity of social workers and non-profit organisations in India to be alert to traffickers and create a strong network to be able to fight them by training the local NGOs (their implementing partners)
• Built an interactive tool, a comic book which, in the form of a story, initiates the discussion about trafficking into the open as interactively and comfortably as possible.