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ASHA RISING

MISSION

Asha Rising offers hope and support to elderly women who have experienced sex
trafficking, stigma, and poverty by providing permanent housing, healthcare, classes, and opportunities to create and sustain community.

Context

When women age out of the sex industry, many can barely eke out a livable wage. With so few available support systems, choices, and resources available to them, elderly survivors often resort to begging or repeating the cycle of exploitation by finding girls or women to work for them. Asha Rising aims to interrupt this pathway to increased vulnerability or further exploitation by addressing the urgent need for housing, food, community, enrichment, and care.

WATER WELLS

Why Older Women?

In the global effort to address the effects of sex trafficking, elderly survivors continue to be relegated to the margins or are rendered invisible altogether. Yet elderly survivors carry compound traumas and face numerous vulnerabilities due to health issues, neglect, social stigma, abuse by family members, inability to work, fragility, poverty, and lack of support and care.

 

At Asha Rising, we believe that women who have experienced sex trafficking should not be stigmatized and are deserving of respect, care, kindness, and support.

Our Roadmap

Women Sustaining Women

At Asha Rising, our residents:

    1. Receive regular medical check-ups and health care
    2. See a trauma counselor
    3. Take literacy, art and yoga classes
    4. Participate in self-care practices including meditation and gardening
    5. Engage in community building through shared activities and outings

At Asha Rising, staff and leadership will:

    1. Be comprised–where possible–of people who are survivors themselves
    2. Be comprised of people whose approaches are trauma-informed and who have experience working with survivors
    3. Strive to be accountable to residents and encourage partnership, participation, and honest communication
    4. Take residents on outings and consistently create opportunities to build and maintain community
    5. Build community and trust with non-residents by delivering packages of food to elderly survivors who live in the community

How Can Asha Rising Affect Change?

By partnering with community members and organizations to create multiple permanent homes in the brothel lanes for elderly women who have aged out of the sex industry, we can:

    1. Interrupt and redefine how space is being used in the brothel lanes
    2. Address the need for permanent housing for women who are living with the stigma of having worked in the sex trade
    3. Increase women’s agency and control over their bodies and lives
    4. Pioneer change by offering and modeling support systems for elderly survivors
    5. Pilot and sustain community-based initiatives that can be replicated
    6. Hire and promote women to leadership positions
    7. Provide women with alternate sources of income (if they wish to work)

If we continue to devalue older women in the red light district, we lose an invaluable opportunity to harness women’s living potential. Healing the effects of gender-based violence and challenging patriarchal values means that we must value females at all stages of life