The Meghalaya Model Process

The evolvement of the Meghalaya Model started way back in 1999 when the Government of India as part of the Environmental Protection ban use of timber as it was causing deforestation from the environmental context, but from the economic point of view the tribal population especially in Meghalaya was badly affected as their source of income is forest resources, as community ownership of land is the cultural composite of all the tribes. This infact affected the project I developed as mentioned in answer No. 5.

A mass migration of rural to urban took shape where young children joined the labour forces either as domestic maids or helper which led to the mushrooming of tea stalls along the national highway paving ways to prostitution and missing children which led to the evolvement of the Meghalaya Model which address the situation, with a unique concept by involving the stakeholders to address the issue collectively and it became a successful model.

(Also Refer Write up)

The Meghalaya Model:

Need Assessment Study:

The Meghalaya model started with a need assessment study which was conducted on random sampling to understand the situation of children both boys and girls based on their age group and the type of work they are involved in. The need assessment led to the development of a programme especially for the children comprising of various activities.

Reach Out Programme for children:

To be on a regular touch with the children, a weekly programme with the help of the volunteers was designed where the children used to come and visit the contact point and spent time with the organization team to understand their rights. Nutrition Programme was initiated to promote their nutritional status. The children were also educated on Child Rights and other basic education along with extra curricular activities.

A data bank was created for each child as an enrolment when they come in contact through the contact point. This was initiated mainly to understand the situation they are undergoing and also to reach out to them as and when required.The regular interaction with the children revealed certain facts to the Organisation.

The Organisation got an insight from the children that there are certain group of people coming from outside the state and recruiting the children from this area to other states for domestic maid labour at a cheaper rate. Thus, the Organisation contacted the families of those children who had been taken out for labour to enquire about the children but it was found that the families had no information about their children, indeed as they were sent through people the family was in contact and they felt safe and did not question their whereabouts in the process.

This brought a missing suspicion and a curiosity about the whereabouts of these children.

Plan of Action / Activities:

•Shared the assessment report with the different Stake Holders in the state to lobby for intervention as it was the need of the hour. Lobbying was done on a regular interval of time and it was shared at a regional level and at different platform.

•Final assessment was shared at the 1st National ATSEC Consultation, Kolkatta. This problem of child missing was ultimately realized to be the problem of Child Trafficking. It was during this meet that Impulse NGO Network was elected as a State Convenor of ATSEC North East India and State Chapter for Meghalaya. This consultation provided a platform and created networking partners across the Country and linking up opportunity with the states across the country as well.

ATSEC is an informal agency, though not a funding agency provided a platform for the Organisation working towards Anti –Trafficking and building networking links with other agencies. This helped in building a lot of understanding among the partners.

After returning from the meet, Impulse NGO Network utilized ATSEC as a platform to reachout to other partner agencies and designed another programme called “Combating Child Trafficking through Networking in the North East India”.

Process:

The process that was adopted during this programme was:

Letter / Email Campaign

•Sending letters and emails to all the ATSEC partners and other non-ATSEC partners.

•Letters / Email Campaign is an activity which was initiated by sending letters and emailed to all the partners informing them about our Organisation, Geographical location, Cultural diversities interms of facial appearance of the children looking similar to Nepalis and that being one of the major cause of children being missing. Thereby, asking their help to take necessary steps to bring back the missing children to their original state. Thus, letter / email campaigning was done on a regular basis. It was a six months campaigning course which was started on July 2001 and continued till December 2001.

Need Assessment

Besides letter and email campaigning, the Organisation felt that another intense assessment study is required to bring a complete picture into the forefront. Thus, the Organisation conducted another research study which was mainly based on girl child “Girl Child Labour Emergence of a New Socio Economic Problem in Shillong” and this study was conducted in depth to find the ground root realities. The need to conduct this study was felt so as to lobby with the State about the real problems faced by the girl child in terms of being employed as domestic maid and with that all forms of exploitation faced by them.

Outcome of Letter / Email Campaigning

The outcome of the Letter / Email Campaign definitely yielded a positive result for the Organisation. It was in December 2001, that Impulse NGO Network received an email from an ATSEC Partner in Mumbai informing about two girls who had been rescued and originally belonged to the state of Meghalaya and thus, the Organisation was requested to take the custody of the girls and the responsibility to repatriate them back to their families.

This was the first case received by Impulse NGO Network who agreed upon taking the responsibility of the rescued girls to repatriate them back to their families and therefore the family study of these girls were conducted. Impulse NGO Network had to faced challenges in intervening the case as it had no pre-designed format to go ahead but still went on.

When the team members from Impulse NGO Network reached Mumbai to take custody of the girls, they met another girl who actually belonged to the state of Tripura and who was rescued by a Non- ATSEC partner organization and thus, this girl too was brought to Meghalaya where the responsibility to repatriate her back to her family, was taken by Impulse NGO Network.

Lobbying for Rehabilitation:

The next need in this regard was the need of a Shelter Home where the girls being brought could be provided shelter till they are repatriated back to their respective families. To fulfill this need the Organisation lobbied with the Social Welfare Department to create a space for providing shelter to these rescued girls who were still minors.

The next step was to provide some type of rehabilitation to the rescued girl as the Organisation strongly believed to rehabilitate them in order to reintegrate them with the society and not to institutionalize them. During the rehabilitation process, the rescued survivors were provided health care, counselling, skill training which was felt necessary and thus the process continued. The rehabilitation was done by networking with other Organisations in the state as well.

The outcome of the lobbying with the Social Welfare Department was that the Observation Home was turned into a Short Stay Home which over the years had been providing shelter to the rescued survivors who were allowed to be there for atleast three months. During their stay in this Home, they were provided health care, counselling and skill training through networking with other partners.

On the other hand, constant lobbying was done with the Law Enforcement, Government Departments, NGOs, Media Personnel and others.

Media Strategies Print / Electronic:

In order to built mass awareness on the issue, the Organisation adopted the Media Strategies both print and electronics and first educating the Media personnel thoroughly on the issue so that they could later create an awareness among the masses. Besides that, the Organisation had many write-ups on the issue including case studies keeping in view the Human Rights perspective and also organizing several press conferences.

Again, the media strategies help to lobbied with the Government in order to pressurize them to design certain preventive measures. It also worked towards sensitizing the masses to understand this critical fact and to tell them where to go and inform if they come across similar situation.

Outcome of Media Strategies:

Over a period of one year, more than 1000 write-ups and articles and cases was published in Local, Regional, National print and electronic by Media personnel. The outcome was missing cases was reported to the organization as well by survivors, media personnel, police and people at large. A tribute to Media was initiated when write ups of press was published as Newsfile October 2001 - March 2003 (A Collection News Clipping on Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children in Meghalaya).

Legal Support Programme:

Simultaneously, it was realized that unless the traffickers are put behind bars, it is not possible to attain 100% result in this field.

A Legal Support Programme in which Impulse NGO Network initiated through counselling the rescued survivors in order to get more information about the traffickers. They were given security assurance that they will be protected in every respect and with their help filed FIR against the traffickers, by the organization.

Outcome of the effort:

There was the arrest of three traffickers in the year 2002 with the support of Media and Police Department Government of Meghalaya.

Training and Shared Networking Strategies:

It was found that the Law Enforcement had very less knowledge on the issue of Human Trafficking and they were not sensitive enough. There was no networking between the Stake Holders and Law Enforcement. Therefore, networking started with other Partners and a series of Training Programme was conducted for the Law Enforcement, different Government Departments, Medical Professionals, Judiciary, Education Department, NGOs and others. The training was done on a series to different levels of Law Enforcement Official.

Seed Money Support:

Another factor that strike the Organisation was to stop re-trafficking taking place. It was felt that some sort of support system is required to be given to these rescued survivors and to get them engaged in earning their means of livelihood. Therefore, seed money system initiated as a means of providing support system to these survivors based mainly on skill building of the survivors not necessarily limited to one skill but providing options based on their skills and interest and also introducing stipend system.

Seed money was provided basically to help them start their small business and a way to earn their livelihood. Therefore, to implement this, the Organisation networked with Corporate Sectors, individuals and CACT, ATSEC which evolved as a major source for providing support system.

Lobbying / Advocacy

•Side by side, the Organisation continued lobbying with the aim to re-activate the State Level Committee on Human Trafficking which was created by the Central Government and which had stop activating.

•Integrating the Anti-Trafficking Course in the PoliceTraining School with the aim to create child friendly system was also initiated.

National Research Study:

It was then felt that to bring National attention, the need is to bring the North East into the map to focus that North East needed support system and is one of the most vulnerable areas. Study was conducted by NHRC to include North East into the study supported by USAID through UNIFEM – Action Research on Trafficking of Women and Children in India.

Impulse NGO Network managed to include secondary data collection for all the eight North Eastern states and primary data for the two most vulnerable states of North East namely Meghalaya and Assam.

Beside these, a Helpline Resource Directory was also developed and State Level Research supported by the Department of Social Welfare, Government of Meghalaya.

Documentation:

Gradually, the Organisation started documentation process documenting and maintaining a case file of each rescued survivor, developing a framework and a format that provides every information about a missing child or person, sending regular updates to Law Enforcement on cases received, updating and educating the media about the situation so that they can write on the issues. Besides that, films were made by the Mass Media student as a social awareness campaign films and educating the general and rural masses on the issue of Human Trafficking.

Project idea is to address trafficked children and missing children who might have been victims of human trafficking. At the same time civil society organizations (NGOs) of a particular state can initiate this idea in any state through networking of various stakeholders like the law enforcement, social welfare department, child welfare committee to address the issue in a holistic way by involving the existing system and infrastructure available in a state.

As per the Chart above,( Pdf file of the chart Meg Model separately attached) which explained the Project Idea which has been developed by me to address human trafficking especially children through a tested model in the state of Meghalaya .This model has been presented in the 8 (eight) North Eastern States of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland ,Mizoram, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh through Impulse NGO Network Program on “State Consultation on Right Based Anti-Trafficking Programming” which was attended by the stakeholders such as the law enforcement, social welfare, labour ,health and education department etc.

The response to adopt the Meghalaya Model has been extremely welcoming as this model is building the capacity of various stakeholders to address the issue collectively and positive networking as well. Financial and Human Resources are being used systematically allowing the state to prevent human trafficking and at the same time not duplicating the idea which in turn would save resources like finance and manpower.

Through intensive networking I developed the model to be implemented as a pilot thus the evolvement of Meghalaya Model.

(A)Partner organizations like ATSEC, CACT, IJM, SOS etc. all over India whenever they conduct raid in Red Light Areas in any metropolitan cities and when they rescued and find the girls belonging to north eastern states of India they always intimate Impulse NGO Network for tracing the family members of the trafficked victims.

(B)The outcome of the Media Campaign has created a mass awareness in which parents, family; relatives would also contact Impulse NGO Network to help them in tracing the missing children. (Refer Newsfile Clippings Pdf File)

(C)Impulse NGO Network considers each case under guidelines created by me for the organization.

(D)As per the created design format letters is being sent to Child Welfare Committee of the concerned district or NGO’s partners showing our willingness to take custody of the trafficked girl in question belonging to the North East of India.

(E)After receiving the information, with the help of the local State Partners in any of the NorthEasternStates as well as law enforcement, try to trace the girl family.

(F)But subsequently even if the girl family is not immediately trace the girl is brought to Impulse NGO Network by the escorted Law Enforcement as per Juvenile Justice Act 2000 guidelines.

  • Custody letters as per design format is taken.
  • The girl is sent to the Government Shelter home run by the Department of Social Welfare, after obtaining permission/ consent from the Director, since a prior MOU for this sort of arrangement was already been created.

Due to the absent of a proper shelter home the process of MOU creation is essential.

A formal permission letter handed over to the Superintendent of the shelter home. But as per the government of India guidelines the creation of Swadhar Shelter Home is essential and not every states follow this procedures in which lobbying for setting up is one of the strategy of the Meghalaya Model.