Meet the man who rehabilitates and reintegrates sex trafficking victims in India

He is an electrical engineer who quit his corporate job in the US to return to India. Pritham Raja, having worked with several non-profits and being passionate about human rights and women's issues, founded Threads of Freedom with Soumil Surana. Threads of Freedom works towards rehabilitation and reintegrating sex trafficking victims into society. In an exclusive interview with dna, Pritham explains the philosophy, work and what they hope to achieve:

How did you come up with the idea of setting up Threads of Freedom?

When I was 18, like most socially conscious rebellious teenagers, I had this naive urge to change the world. I aspired to become the Prime Minister and single-handedly rid India of all its evils, in my very first term. After all, nothing is impossible, right? As my prefrontal cortex continued developing, I started getting more interested in social issues in particular and joined non-profits to understand issues around the world. I developed a particular interest in human rights issues concerning minority rights and women’s empowerment. It was then that I stumbled upon a Ted Talk by Sunitha Krishnan on sex trafficking. I was shocked. Yes, I had vaguely heard about trafficking but had no idea how cruel it is. I re-watched the video, played, replayed and kept going through it - over and over again. I started reading articles and books on the issue, and watched numerous documentaries detailing the plight of these women and then decided something had to be done. In my mind, sex trafficking was an exceptionally evil crime and I simply had to do something to fight it.

Out of this passion, was born Threads of Freedom (Tofu’s parent organisation) to help reintegrate victims of trafficking. Reintegration was a challenge that every rescue organisation faced and I believed that I could use market forces to come up with a viable solution. So one fine day, I left my cushy job in the US, moved to Mumbai and set up ToF. It’s been a wild ride ever since, but one that has been super exciting and given me immense satisfaction. We’ve been able to come up with an effective market solution to reintegrate victims of trafficking and all our partners, especially rescue organisations, are extremely bullish on our ability to reintegrate more and more survivors of trafficking.

Are there any stories of these victims that really touched you?

Every one of our candidates has a very touching story. We recently inducted a new batch of candidates and got to know them better at our meeting last week. Our candidates came out of their rooms to gather in our reintegration home lobby and introduced themselves to Adarsh and me. One of them walked out and said, “Hello, my name is Padma*…. sorry Prabha*”. 

How could someone confuse her own name? I thought but didn’t make a big deal out of it. Every time we meet our candidates, Adarsh gets into his element, cracks jokes and puts everyone at ease. It’s always a lot of fun hanging out with them: there’s a lot of laughter, leg-pulling and just generally, we all love hanging out and talking. Prabha got pretty excited when she found out that I speak Tamil and started speaking to me in Tamil to blank stares from half the room. At some point, Prabha called herself Padma again and  corrected herself. At this point, Adarsh casually asked her what her actual name is and why she keeps using both names. There was an awkward silence. Padma looked away, and the counsellor told us in a hushed voice, “Prabha is the name given by her parents. Padma is the name the trafficker gave her”. Adarsh was quick on his feet and in his characteristic way immediately responded, “I like Prabha better, I’m going to call you Prabha” and immediately diffused the tension in the room. We were back to joking around and casual conversations. Whenever an incident like this happens, it drags me to reality and I’m reminded everyone around me in that room has gone through unimaginable horrors. Yet here we are, joking, laughing and enjoying ourselves – forgetting the past and looking to the future.

It also goes to show the level of control traffickers and brothel owners have. So much so that a person can sub-consciously change her own name! That’s crazy, it’s scary, and it reminds me of the mammoth task we have in reintegrating our beneficiaries. But the laughs, the smiles, the giggles and their excitement to start a new chapter gives me confidence.

Do you think we do enough to help victims of sex trafficking?
I think the answer lies in the following statistic – every year approximately 100,000 women are trafficked while only 3,000-4,000 are rescued. That is a measly rate of 3-4%. What’s worse is that their struggle does not end after they get rescued. Oftentimes, families refuse to accept them back and they struggle to find jobs and regular employment. Fundamentally, there is a lack of awareness towards this issue in my experience.  A lot of times, I need to explain what sex trafficking is when I start working with new partners and it's an issue that they have either vaguely or never heard of.

So what can everybody do?
Rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration of trafficking victims are extremely hard. So support NGOs working in this sector, we need all the support we can get whether it’s financial or in kind. Spread awareness of the issue among friends and family. It might help rescue or prevent someone from getting trafficked. Even if it helps one person, then it is worth all the effort.
 
Tell us about the brand Tofu.
Tofu is a clothing brand owned and run by ToF. We guarantee jobs to every candidate in our program and the way we do that is by producing clothes that are then sold under the Tofu label. So with every sale, not only are we able to employ more trafficking survivors, currently all the profits go back into the program to run our reintegration service.

How do you sustain Threads of Freedom?
ToF raises funds through grants/donations, product sales (tofu), and through crowdfunding. Currently, the amount raised through tofu alone isn’t sufficient to run ToF, so we depend on external sources of funding, but our goal is to eventually grow tofu enough so that the overall organisation is self-sustainable.

What do you hope to do in the long-run?
Our goal is to reach out to as many trafficking survivors as possible and also to expand our services to other disadvantaged women like domestic abuse survivors and those at high risk of trafficking. Currently we work out of Bangalore, and going forward we plan on expanding to Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata (in that order), followed by Dhaka and Phnom Phen.