The Missing Link Trust is one of India’s leading organizations working to prevent sex trafficking through awareness, education and empowerment. The brainchild of Leena Kejriwal, Missing is an award winning anti-trafficking campaign using art & technology to create awareness against sex trafficking.
The podcast is set to explore issues concerning child safety and protection in India, child sexual abuse, adolescent sexuality, children in conflict with law, cyber safety and more. Through the experience and insight from experts in the space and looking at real life cases that have found their way in the public eye, we see how each one of us can play an active role to prevent this issue, that is much closer to home than we realise. Our intention is to build awareness on cyber safety, adolescent sexuality and reintegration of survivors.
It will feature experts in the law and NGO space such as:
- Suresh Kumar – lawyer and author of ‘Child Trafficking: The Fight for Freedom’
- Hasina Kharbhih – founder of Impulse NGO Network
- Bharti Ali and Enakshi Ganguly – Co-founders of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights
- Baitali Ganguly – Founder member of Jabala Action Research Organisation
- Ravi Kant – Advocate and Founder of Shakti Vahini
- Dr. Karnika Seth – Lawyer, writer, educator, policymaker, and legal advisor to the Ministry of Information Technology)
- Sebastian Edassery – Director & Chief Security Officer at Deloitte, who is also associated with organisations like Interpol, the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC)
- Dr. Debarati Halder – Advocate and cyber victim counsellor
- Dr. Danielle Knafo – Clinical psychologist and author of ‘The Age of Perversion’
- Nirali Bhatia – Cyber psychologist
- Puneeta Roy – Founder Trustee of The Yuva Ekta Foundation
- Priti Patkar – Co-founder and Director of the non-profit, Prerana that has done pioneering work in the red-light districts of Mumbai
Leena Kejriwal, founder, The Missing Link Trust says
“Through gathering a better understanding of sex trafficking in India, we find out that it is much closer to home than we realise. The experiences and insights from experts in the field aren’t decades old, the real life cases that we’ll be discussing aren’t too far behind in the past… it is very much happening in the present, and it’s something that we need to collectively work towards preventing in the future.“
Quotes from other speakers from the podcast
“We need to have two things in place. One, to choke the demand because child trafficking is a largely demand-driven problem… How can it be choked? By prosecuting.” – Suresh Kumar, Lawyer and author of ‘Child Trafficking: The Fight for Freedom’
“If we have to reduce human trafficking, then we have to strengthen the economy at the source… sustainable livelihood, a market resilience… because then that gives the choice and the power for women not to migrate.” – Hasina Kharbhih, Founder of Impulse NGO Network
“The game changer is parenting. The right parenting. Investing in the child’s developmental years… a stable, secure, and a caring environment.” – Nirali Bhatia, Cyber psychologist
“Most children are exposed to pornography between the ages of 9 and 11, which is very, very young… development of their sexual desires becomes hijacked by the Internet.” – Dr. Danielle Knafo, Clinical psychologist and author of ‘The Age of Perversion’
“What is consent and what is not consent, how to say no and when to say no. Those are conversations that parents need to have with their children.” – Enakshi Ganguly, Co-founder of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights
“The first thing that parents should start working on is to define personal standards of privacy for the kids. It is never too early to make them understand… there are strangers who can harm the kids online and even offline.” – Sebastian Edassery, Director & Chief Security Officer at Deloitte
“The first and foremost challenge is training the grassroot level government officers. The judges also must be trained, and judges also must understand what’s exactly happening so that they can also take care of the victims.” – Dr. Debarati Halder, Advocate and cyber victim counsellor
“Today you need the internet for a lot of educational and research purposes, entertainment, communication and otherwise. But what I can suggest is that they can use filtering tools… I think parents have a role to play here. And they must adopt these security practices and gentle parenting guidelines.” – Dr. Karnika Seth, Lawyer, writer, educator, policymaker, and legal advisor to the Ministry of Information Technology)
“We need to educate our young people, and to publicise it, to talk about it in schools, to provide them with as much information… these cases are rising very fast, and we need to act. Parents need to be made aware, teachers need to be made aware.” – Ravi Kant,
Advocate and Founder of Shakti Vahini
“Media is such an important tool to actually work with and use in the communities now. And mainstream commercial media is what we need to use for behaviour change communication.” – Bharti Ali, Co-founder of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights
“When there’s a forced marriage; all the sexual acts within those marriages are sexual violence… that should be considered as sexual violence, and we should address those as sexual violence.” – Baitali Ganguly, Founder member of Jabala Action Research Organisation
Release schedule:
We have eight episodes planned for this season. One episode will be released every Monday from August 15 onwards on all major platforms globally including Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, Audible, JioSaavn, Apple Podcasts, Gaana, Wynk, Bingepods and wherever you get your podcasts.
