“But keeping that child in school is even harder. Created by Reshma Ghatala, Sweet Kaaram Coffee is a slice of life series. “Many people think: ‘Oh, enroll a child in school,’” Gupta said.

But keeping them safe is a long-term commitment, Gupta said. Some fathers have tried to snatch the girls back.īy keeping costs down, Apne Aap is able to keep the girls in school for about $160 a month per student. A few graduates of the school are even heading off to college - with ambitions of becoming lawyers and doctors.īut many struggle to achieve a much smaller ambition: avoiding being caught up in systemic prostitution.Īt the school, fathers regularly put pressure on the girls to do their “family duty” and start working as prostitutes. “But it's neat and clean.”įor most of the 100 girls at the school, it's the first time any member of their family has been offered access to education. “It's not a five-star school,” Gupta said. Gupta's group works to get the girls out of the reach of men who might sell them - by enrolling them in the boarding school but allowing weekend visits with their mothers and siblings. The Nat group has been relegated to the margins of Indian society since the 1870s, when it was classified as a “criminal tribe” by British colonial rulers. “Otherwise, they would join their mothers in prostitution.”

“The school keeps them safe and away from the home-based brothels that they were growing up in,” said Ruchira Gupta, Apne Aap's founder. Founded by the nonprofit organization Apne Aap, its supporters and the Bihar state government, the school aims to break the bonds of caste and inequality. Their school, not far from the border with Nepal in the Indian state of Bihar, is part of a national program of girls’ boarding schools called Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, intended specifically for minority groups. They are members of a marginalized caste known as the Nat community, which is trapped in a system of hereditary prostitution. to other forms of human capital investments such as child school enrollment. (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times) Twelve-year-old Aarti Kumari combs her hair at the Kasturba Gandhi Girls School.Īt this school, many of the children playing games, doing homework, helping with dinner and making crafts are the daughters of prostitutes. female-male sex ratio which has fallen from 0.972 at the beginning of this.

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