Fighting Human Trafficking in India
Hands-on approach including awarness, education, community engagement, institutional trust-building and strong networks.
Loreto Sisters in India, present since 1840, personally coordinate ARISE, a church-wide initiative across nineteen diocesan regions, supervising fifty-eight steams and coordinating three hundred lay community mobilisers working in urban informal settlements and rural trafficked-origin villages.
They directly manage awareness campaigns in slum communities, conducting monthly community gatherings where they educate 40–60 women about trafficking risks, unsafe migration routes, FGM (female genital mutilation) harms, and domestic violence indicators—establishing ongoing protective relationships with vulnerable populations.
Also, the Loreto and Mary Ward Schools integrate comprehensive trafficking prevention, rights education, safety curricula, and economic literacy into mainstream subjects, with educators personally identifying at-risk girls and initiating individual case management, parental counselling, and school-retention support.
The Mary Ward Social Center in Kolkata has established a peer-to-peer monitoring system rising awareness in youth groups. Often, peers are the first to discover changes like school absence or discover threads for their friends. They learn where to get help and how to stay safe themselves.
We also facilitate income-generating schemes, e.g. through microfinance groups, skills training cooperatives, and women’s enterprises, personally mentoring 1,800 women annually toward economic independence as primary trafficking prevention.
Our sisters and the lay collaborators furthermore provide integrated case management, simultaneously addressing trafficking risk, gender-based violence, FGM pressures, child marriage threats, and educational access within individual family contexts.
Our century-long institutional presence and established community trust enable access to highly stigmatised survivors and enables essential mediation between them and government prosecution services, government rehabilitation schemes, and further support partnerships. This makes it possible, to combine advocacy with survivor-centred holistic support addressing intersecting justice issues.
Integrated trafficking prevention curricula within the Loreto schools
Rights education and safety training
Economic literacy and entrepreneurship modules
At-risk student identification and case management
Parent engagement and school-retention support
Teacher training on safeguarding protocols
Monthly community gatherings in urban settlements (40–60 women each)
Trafficking prevention education
Peer-to-peer monitoring system
FGM harm awareness and abandonment advocacy
Domestic violence recognition and response training
Safe migration pathway information and risk communication
Estimated 3,000+ women reached quarterly
Microfinance group facilitation (50+ groups)
Skills training and cooperative enterprise development
Livelihood mentoring program for 1,800 women annually
Business planning and financial literacy support
Market linkage and livelihood sustainability
Women’s economic independence as trafficking prevention
Collective economic advocacy and rights awareness
Individual and family-level assessment (trafficking, FGM, violence, child marriage, education)
Coordinated response addressing intersecting vulnerabilities
Family counselling and safety planning
Healthcare and legal service coordination
Psychosocial support and trauma healing
Long-term follow-up and reintegration support
Lay health volunteer development (300+ workers)
Village-level prevention network creation (190 villages)
Grassroots awareness campaign facilitation
Referral pathway establishment and monitoring
Ongoing supervision and skills upgrading
Sustainable local capacity beyond Sister presence
Village council and local government partnership
Facilitation of access to government welfare scheme (child protection, women’s support)
Police liaison and survivor protection advocacy
Policy recommendations informed by field documentation
Contributions to the national anti-trafficking strategy
Multi-sector coordination for survivor reintegration
Domestic violence awareness and women’s legal rights
Child marriage prevention through education access
Girls’ education advocacy and school retention
Caste-based discrimination awareness
Intersectional justice framework integration
We recognise trafficking as interconnected with systemic poverty, gender inequality, inadequate education access, and discriminatory migration policies.
As Mary Ward women, we aim to further Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) in a specific Mary Ward way – that is, in accordance with the charism of the Just Soul and its defining virtues of freedom, justice, sincerity and felicity which speak so powerfully to issues of JPIC and their integral nature in all aspects of mission and ministry.
We are working in different areas and projects – not out of ourselves, but because we allow ourselves to be sent by God. We form our sisters to be mobile and available, willing to go wherever they are sent. We expect them to strive, like Mary Ward, to have that inner freedom to respond to the call to leave all and follow Christ with passion and compassion.
