Anu Begum lost her father when she was 8. Her father died of blood cancer. He has a small piece of homestead land in Madaripur district. Now she couldn’t remember her actual village address. She had one sister and two brothers. After her father’s death her mother started to work as maid servant work in a students’ hostel. Her elder sister helped her mother in the work as she often suffered from illness. One day a rumor spread that her sister has indecent relation with the hostel dwellers and her mother lost her job. They passed few days in starvation and Anu left the house and reached to Khulna by bus. As she didn’t know much about the new town, she started to cry beside a grocery shop and one woman took her to the Khulna brothel by promising her to manage domestic help’s work and sold her there. Anu’s owner who bought her from the lady used to take good care of her in the beginning but soon started to torture her mercilessly whenever she refused to take customer or couldn’t earn enough money for her. She had to take customer at the time of her illness. Her owner kept her in starvation when she earned less and seared her body with hot cooking dices. She couldn’t save a single penny in her time at the Khulna brothel and one day she managed to flee away and came to Jessore brothel. She started to live in the Jessore Jhalaipotti brothel on rental basis. After 3 months her house owner (who had many young sex workers under her custody) left the brothel after marrying one guy and Anu replaced her position in the brothel. She had also managed to save some money this time. She thought that it would be easier to be a house owner but she experienced that their income was snatched by different fortune hunters like police, local miscreants, hooligans, journalists etc. The owner of the brothel, pimps and some other people joined with them to torture the sex workers and didn’t pay money after using them. The sex workers were forced to perform indecent thing in front of them and took their money in different excuses and the sex workers even had to manage alcohol for them. The dead body of any sex worker was not allowed for burial in the existing grave yard rather the dead body was floated to the river. The sex workers didn’t get any support to protest against these mischiefs until Jagorani Chakra Foundation started to work for their rights in the brothel.

The Socially Disadvantaged People’s Programme (SDPP) was designed to ensure basic human rights for the sex workers living in the brothels and establish their own organisation which will be their platform to demand rights. In the beginning some restraints came from the miscreants who were benefited from the brothel but those were gradually removed after the sex workers formed their own organisations. Now the dead sex workers are buried in the existing graveyard and their children can be admitted in the schools. They are no longer neglected in the hospitals and other service providing agencies. They received various rights based training and life skill development trainings from the project which made them aware about their rights and they are now saving money regularly. Some sex workers have managed to find alternative income generating options after receiving the training from the programme. JCF also facilitated to open their personal bank accounts and their savings are now secured. The sex workers of Jessore and Fultola brothel are now passing better days in respect of outside interference and are becoming stronger through their nationwide network based in Dhaka.

In 2009 Saleha Begum was calculating her income and struggling with the accounts. She profited Tk. 47,622 from beef fattening, Tk. 6,390 by selling milk, Tk. 1,055 from vegetables, Tk. 22,000 from green chillies, Tk. 5725 from Jute cultivation, Tk. 20,500 from paddy, Tk. 245 from selling eggs, Tk. 1,800 from wheat and Tk. 5,000 from ploughing others land. Finally the amount stands at 110,737 as net profit. She has been able to make the changes in last two years. Two of her school going children are attending school and she is planning to purchase some cultivable land. Still it is a dream for her.

It was not so easy for her. She used to live on husking rice of others and eat rice fragments and selling rice polish. If she couldn’t produce quality rice she had to repay that by selling her labour. She had to tolerate different types of harassment for this and this way she had to lead her life once or two meals a day with her husband Abu Taleb and four children in Prannath Char of Shahidbag union in Kaunia upazila of Rangpur district. She also had to sell her labour in advance and there was no dignity for her in the society. She was a common ultra poor woman in her community.

In June 2007, she was selected as a beneficiary of JCF’s Income & food security for Ultra Poor Project. She became the chairman of her group Chetona , her code no. is 1352. She was struggling with her livelihood but she didn’t lose her hope for a better life. She was dreaming to be a solvent woman who has basic things to live with the family. One day Field workers from JCF discussed about her Family Development Plan (FDP). She stumbled a bit. She didn’t know what a FDP is but the FO motivated her and her group members to make a plan for their own families. She observed with her stunning eyes that trainings like: skill, leadership and disaster management was provided to her group according to their FDP. Her dreams started from here. After receiving trainings she realised that she could make her own future by engaging her in different activities. She received first asset from the project which was worth of Tk. 7,800. She was continuing with her previous job and after 5 months she sold the bull at Tk. 18,500. She gained Tk. 10,700. Again she bought a bull by Tk. 7,800 and purchased some rice for her family. She sold the bull after 2 months and made profit of Tk. 6,200 and took lease 22 decimals of cultivable land and cultivated wheat in the land and earned Tk. 1,800. Later the project provided her jute cultivation materials and she made profit of Tk. 725. In the mean time she cultivated chillies on 40 decimals of land as sharecropper and made profit of Tk. 22,000. In this way she received support from the project for beef fattening of 3 more times. She bought a milking cow by her profit money and is now getting 2 kgs of milk every day and earning Tk. 60 per day.

Now a days, Saleha is a community leader, people use to come to her for her suggestions in their social problems, local UP members now call her Saleha Apa. She always dreams her children will be successful professionals like the other children of the wealthy people. She is a fortune hunter. She hunted her fortune by herself.

Jagorani Chakra Foundation has started a new intervention in 2006 with the new concept of strengthening community mechanism to protect children from violence, exploitation and such other rights violation incidences at every place of the society. Violence and abuse is a common feature frequently faced by children but due to various reasons they keep silent. To address this phenomenon Jagorani Chakra Foundation took action under the Strengthening Community Mechanism for Child Protection (SCMPC) project to set up an appropriate protection mechanism for children to reduce violence, abuse and exploitation against them, in which the vital protagonist is the community. Various stake holders like local government, non-government actor, civil society etc has been included (Child Protection Committee-the Apex body) in the mechanism, to create an active driving force to eliminate violence against children. Since inception the project experienced many drawbacks which inspired more to achieve the target. One such incidence is depicted below-

On 2nd March, 2010 a grade seven girl Eti Khatun (14) informed the project that her parents had arranged her marriage but she was not interested to get married. The project staff investigated the allegation and got proof. The girl was the niece of a local influential Aziz in Kholadanga area of Jessore suburban. The alleged family claimed that they had the opportunity to arrange their girl’s wedding with a potential person and they wouldn’t miss that. They also told that Eti had some breaks in her education and though she was in grade seven her actual age is 18. The family members when asked to show her birth certificate they became angry and challenged the visiting persons of the project to stop the wedding if they could.

The project staff communicated with the local Union Parishad Chairman to stop the marriage as he had the authority to provide birth certificate and they urged the chairman to treat the matter seriously. The chairman replied that the next UP election was knocking at the door and he couldn’t do this because that might went against him in the election. He advised the project staff to take necessary steps of their own. The project submitted application to the Officer in-charge of Jessore Police Station, District Women Affairs Officer and UP Chairman to prevent the incidence as there was no child protection committee in the area.

The police station responded positively and police force was sent to the house of Eti. The father was arrested to arrange her daughter’s marriage at early age and he was about to send to the police station and was boarded to the police van. The local elites and family persons requested police to forgive him and admitted their mischief. The police released him on the condition of not arranging her marriage till she is 18 with the witness of local people.

After this incidence her family members communicated the UP Chairman and he fabricated a Birth Certificate of Eti mentioning her age as 17 years and 8 months. The certificate was produced before police and the police informed the project about the certificate. As birth certificate is the legal document of proving any person’s age the project couldn’t do anything and Eti was married.

A few days later the local representative of a National Daily came to the project office for collecting information of child marriage of last one week as a part of preparing reports on the eve of International Women’s Day. The journalist as usual visited the house of Eti and such other victims and upon finding the truth he told Eti’s family members about the crime they committed and publishing the report in newspaper. The family members were afraid of this news and hired some miscreants to suppress the news. The miscreants came to the project office one and threatened to stop the matter and asked for the name and address of the investigating officer. The project person discussed about the negative side of early marriage with the group and after a long session they understood the fact and asked to stop the investigation. The project stopped the process by considering the probable humiliation of Eti at her in-law’s house if the investigation goes farther.

This incidence made all the concerned staff of JCF more determined to eradicate the social curse like early marriage and made them aware about the facts and figures of combating this type of incidence.