This International Women’s Day, we want to share with you the experiences of the #PowerfulWomenOfAHT. In this interview, Hasina Kharbhih, Founder of Impulse NGO Network, spoke to us about what it was like to start an NGO when she was 17 years old and also shared with us what the context of the crime is in the North Eastern states of India. 

What were your motivations behind starting Impulse?

Impulse NGO Network was started when my school friends and I decided to be changemakers at the age of 17. We studied in a Convent school where we were a part of the Leadership Training Service (LTS) which is a volunteer program that builds social leadership. It was this program that truly built my understanding of the community I live in and bred a strong sense of empathy in me. Since I was from a sheltered family, every experience that I had because of LTS was an eye-opening one. In class, we used to have subjects about Human Rights but I can confidently say that I learnt much more about human rights through our volunteering efforts than I did in class. Our collective aspiration was to do something for the community that we were exposed to and starting an organization together seemed like a sustainable way to contribute towards the growth of the community.  Eventually, my friends moved on in different directions but I believed that there was a lot more for me to do in this organization so I continue to work here since 1995.

The Impulse Model has resulted in exceptional work. How did you build and conceptualize the model? What makes the model unique?

As a 17-year-old, I did not understand Human Trafficking and neither did I foresee that I will build a model to combat it. Initially Impulse was working for the upliftment of livelihood of rural communities in a village in the East Khasi Hill district of Meghalaya. This community was rich in craft, artisanal work and we felt that giving them market access will help promote entrepreneurship and encourage education among the children of the community. At that time, we were only beginning to understand the connection between lack of livelihood opportunities and unsafe migration. Back in 1989, there was a judgment from the Supreme Court to ban accessing and utilising forest resources. The community that we worked with were not able to access the raw materials for their craft and this had an adverse impact on their livelihood. Our initiative could not be continued without the raw materials and so even that stopped. We saw the entire community suffering right in front of eyes. The indigenous population from the hills usually have a lot of children and they were unable to care for them. Children were being sent to work outside as domestic labour/child labour but no one would hear back from them once they left. This entire experience helped us understand the truth behind migration in economically vulnerable communities. This experience led us to identify the problem and delve deeper into it. We were determined to find a solution and we were reaching out to all stakeholders including the government to understand how we could develop a sustainable solution. For me, this experience undoubtedly sowed the seed of developing the Impact Model.

While we were still very young, we got invited to a conference organized by Action Against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children (ATSEC) which was initiated by Mr. Manabendra Mandal. This meeting was held in Kolkata and organizations from all over the country were present. It was at this conference that I met Pravin and Priti Patkar from Prerana and Roma Debabrata from STOP. I was focused on listening and learning from all these established organizations and individuals. This meeting helped to define the direction that Impulse NGO Network was going to take. When my turn came to speak, I shared all the information that I had from the work that we did with the community. My role was to open the window to the North East and its conditions. After I shared the experiences of our organization, it was pointed out to me that it was Human Trafficking that was the cause of the missing children. I came back to Shillong and discussed my learnings with the team. We decided to run an email campaign which was basically an email that we sent to all the organizations from the meeting. In this email, I introduced myself and asked everyone to get in touch with us if they find any trafficked girls from the North East. I told them that we can work together to ensure that they can be repatriated back to their homes safely. It was Priti and Pravin who sent the first email when 2 girls from Meghalaya and one girl from Tripura were rescued from Kamathipura. At that time, we focused on managing these 3 cases and learning from our experiences.

Eventually, a lot more cases came our way and we started building a protocol on how these cases can be handled keeping in mind the legalities of that time. This is how the Impact Model was born. It was born as a response to unsafe migration in the states of North East India and the need to build a network of stakeholders working in the Anti-Human Trafficking space. This model stands on 12 pillars at the moment – 6P’s and 6R’s

6 P’s – Partnership, Prevention, Protection, Policing, Press, Prosecution  

6 R’s – Report, Rescue, Rehabilitation, Repatriation, Reintegration, Restitution

The value of Impulse model lies in the partnerships. If you are an organization based in the destination crime location, you should be able to connect to the source location without having to travel. In case you are an organization doing repatriation, you should not have to travel across states, you can connect to other organizations in the transit route and the source location.

The Impulse Model then scaled up and got replicated in all the other states in North East India. We identified leaders in all the states to take this model ahead. We acknowledged that it is not important for us to have an institution in every state but what was important was to build leadership for a common vision. In 2012, the Impulse Model got the World Innovation prize from the Global Development Network under the Japanese Most Innovative Development Project of the World Bank. Recently, we have also launched our Impulse Case Management Center (ICMC) which is a documentation platform that came up after we realised that weak documentation was affecting prosecution. The ICMC records the case in the database and refers it to the respective AHTU and partner organizations at the source and destination points immediately.

What is the biggest challenge of working in the Anti-Human Trafficking space?

According to me, information sharing is one of the biggest challenges in this space right now. Organizations that have established themselves after working on the ground for decades are not able to share their learnings and experiences with newer organization because of a lack of common platforms and a lack of documented resources. Interventions in the Anti-Human Trafficking (AHT) space have evolved with time and if these evolutions are not documented well, it might result in newer organizations wasting resources to come up with existing solutions. While new school of thoughts, a fresh outlook and creative innovations are definitely the need of the hour, it is important that younger organizations capitalize on efforts of the past. 

In your observation what is it that people misunderstand about Human Trafficking?

In the initial years of my work, 25 years ago, human trafficking was widely misunderstood because the perception was always that women are choosing to be in prostitution and consensually participating in the same. This misunderstanding grew when it was seen that rescued women were young without understanding that they were probably trafficked when they were children. So, defining the thin line of pursuing economic opportunities and being exploited through trafficking was very important. In today’s times, the trends of human trafficking are even more complex and thus, highly misunderstood. For example, in recent years, the destination crime of sex trafficking is not based out of only the Red Light Areas (RLAs). Red Light Areas have disintegrated over the years and even if they haven’t, they are different compared to what they used to be. Now the locations for these destination crimes could include houses, hotels, other areas. In the case of the North East, victims usually consent to go to work but then the destination point turns exploitative. It is even more challenging because the crime cannot be termed as human trafficking unless the girl states that she has been exploited. Hence, we prefer to use the term ‘Unsafe Migration’. Unsafe Migration could lead to human trafficking and exploitation at different levels but trafficking cases can only be identified post the rescue to understand whether there was choice involved and what kind of choice was it.  

Another misunderstanding that comes up is between the conflict of personal rights and human trafficking. If a woman who is in the sex trade believes that she is not a victim and wishes to continue in the trade, then it is not our place to ask her to come out of it and move to a shelter home. While we don’t stand for legalization at all, we do believe in the personal rights of women.

Since a considerable amount of misunderstanding has been due to irresponsible reporting, we decided to come up with a solution for the same. This resulted in the Impulse Model Press Lab that was a fellowship for senior and mid-level journalists to develop a better reporting standard for crimes of trafficking. Our team leader of the fellowship Mr. Karma Paljor from CNN fame attempted to build the capacity of media professionals to encourage them for in-depth reporting instead of always focusing on the number of girls that have been rescued.

How can people who are not from this domain and space contribute towards Anti-Human Trafficking work?

As a creative person myself, I believe that a contribution of creativity to the Anti-Human Trafficking domain will be invaluable. Filmmakers, photographers, writers, artists allow a different mode of knowledge sharing which will help engage a wider audience for the cause. Someone who has never had the opportunity to educate themselves on the crime of human trafficking might never be able to understand information bombarded with jargons. I remember this one time when we were trying to campaign against the involvement of children in coal mining, we won the Public Interest Litigation primarily because we invited media and journalists to report from the ground and their narratives proved to be third party evidence.

What advice would you give young girls or women wanting to start an NGO or social enterprise of their own?

I think every young person has dreams and aspirations and the only way to be able to work towards these dreams is to build resilience. If there is something that disturbs you or makes you uncomfortable, then go ahead and change it. It is important to have the courage to take the first step. Another advice I would give young girls is to network well using social media tools which help you to stay connected but sometimes the information on the internet can get overwhelming and thus, result in distraction. My last piece of advice for young girls and social entrepreneurs is to research a lot before taking the plunge towards starting your own NGO. Look at what has already been done and what has had positive results. As a social entrepreneur, it is not necessary for each one of us to start our own organization. We can work and contribute in existing organizations. Every young person is after all, a changemaker. You can bring change by joining an organization and also by building new spaces/innovations that the organization might not have.

How did COVID affect your organization’s work and was there any impact on you/your work individually as a woman?

COVID-19 resulted in unsafe migration due to the increase in economic vulnerability during the lockdown. This can definitely affect our work as well. In fact, we observed inbound migration back to the source cities during the lockdown after migrant workers lost their jobs. As of now, the community of 7000 women that we work with are fortunately safe and are successfully working from home since flexibility of time and space was a part of our model from the start.  However, we had to bear a higher inventory cost because we distributed raw materials for 6-7 months in advance. Eventually, we asked the women to convert all our woven textiles to masks and sell that. We did an online campaign focusing on the stories of the women and the masks they were producing.

At an organizational level, we started working from home during the lockdown and continue to work from home even today. As a leader, I was adamant to not rush or panic but to instead take a pause, re-evaluate our programs and come up with solutions to sustain the program’s impact during COVID-19. It was important to send the team back home from the local office because it was important for them to get the space to reconcile their thoughts and focus while feeling safe and secure about their health.