On June 4th, Aaroogya and Silicon Valley Global health hosted their fifth episode of our podcast series "Advancing Women’s Agency," featuring Smarita Sengupta, founder of Destiny Foundation.
As both a business and non-profit, Destiny Foundation disrupts the cycle of human trafficking in women and children by offering rehab, employment, advocacy, and community leadership programs in locations of high trafficking risk in India, and creating space for the women to protect themselves with dignity.
The scale of the human trafficking industry worldwide is gigantic; before the pandemic, 14 million people were enslaved, while traffickers profited $150 B per year globally from bonded labor, exploitive work, and organ and sex trafficking.
During the pandemic, however, Destiny has continued to educate, empower, and employ victims of trafficking, while also "multitasking," as Ms. Sengupta says, beyond those three fundamental goals. As a front-line organization, Destiny provided information sharing services and reached over 500 families with care packages. Destiny supported at least 200 families among these 500 with more major, frequent support.
Destiny Foundation has also partnered with Catholic University Lueven's student-run Project Innovation Project (PiP) to develop an age-appropriate educational game by which children in high risk areas like the red-light district and the slums can learn how to be wary of traffickers operating over digital platforms like social media.
Visit the link below to view this episode and to learn more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckA6CHmvstU