Ministry to Build Shelter School for Child Sex-Trade Victims

Thursday, Jun. 11, 2009 Posted: 1:13:15AM HKT

In response to the adverse societal effects of a lucrative sex-trade industry in India, a homegrown evangelistic organisation has started a programme to raise public awareness, funding and action to help victimised women and children.

One of the current projects of The Amber Initiative, a programme of Eagles Communications, is to raise funds for the building of a shelter school in Kolkata that will house children under threat due to their witness of heinous crimes, according to the programme website.

Part of The Amber Initiative’s vision of empowering youth by providing them education and opportunities for a brighter future, the Sneha School and Shelter aims to play a key role in the social and economic reintegration of disadvantaged children, especially girls who are victims or survivors of sexual exploitation and trafficking.

More than a place of education, the Sneha school seeks to provide a safe haven for victims of such crimes and to be a vibrant centre that engages the entire community in the rural area in Kolkata.

As a school, it aspires to be a model for a holistic secondary education programme, focusing on being at the cutting edge of academic excellence, fostering a spirit of tenacity and pursuit of knowledge, together with the goal of renewing passion for life and hope.

And as a social welfare organisation, it seeks to be a source of light for the rural community in Kolkata, serving as a haven for those who need protection and safety and services such as legal aid or psychosocial assistance. Through the school, The Amber Initiative aims to form a community partnership in Kolkata and offer supplementary programmes on top of the secondary mainstream curriculum.

At large, The Amber Initiative seeks to empower the children and youth by both raising awareness about the issue of sex trafficking and other fund-raising initiatives in furtherance of the United Nations millennium development goal of universal primary education and youth empowerment.

In this, the programme aims to work closely with upper strata philanthropic donors and youth, in Singapore and worldwide, with the objective of awakening a sense of moral obligation and responsibility in Singapore youth and providing them with opportunities to use their raw passion to help victims of the sex-trade and be creative and innovative in the ways they go about community development and rehabilitation.

In the way of raising awareness, The Amber Initiative Inspiration module, which is a part of the local public education Community Involvement Programme, reaches out to youth across Singapore, offering them a fresh perspective on doing social work. The Child Ambassador Programme gets the public to establish friendships with children in Kolkata.

The programme also coordinates three fund-raising initiatives currently, namely The Amber Gala Dinner and Official Launch, through which organisers aim to raise funds – S$500K – for the building of the Sneha school and shelter, Bangle-lore, an effort to sell bangles from Kolkata and the printing of cards depicting the children displaying different emotions and expressions in four designs titled: Love, Laugh, Dream, Hope.

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Edmond Chua
The Christian Post (Singapore) Reporter