PORTLAND, Maine — Ruchira Gupta, a global leader in the fight against sex trafficking, will visit Maine for the Justice for Women Lecture Series, hosted by the University of Maine School of Law.
A native of India and a former journalist, Gupta, 51, will make several public appearances in Portland between March 16 and 20, according to a press release issued Wednesday.
Gupta has worked for more than 25 years in India and around the world to combat the root causes of sex trafficking and to provide alternatives for at-risk girls and women. She is the founder and president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a grassroots organization that has helped thousands of women access safe housing, education, job training and other resources. In 1996, Gupta won an Emmy Award for her 1996 documentary, “The Selling of Innocents.”
In 2009, Gupta was awarded the Clinton Global Citizen Award for Commitment to Leadership in Civil Society by the Clinton Foundation, established by former President Bill Clinton. At the awards ceremony, she described what her organization had accomplished.
“Apne Aap has been able to establish 67 self-help groups of women and put 2,500 children of women in prostitution into schools,” she said. “The existence of these self-help groups has challenged the notion that slavery and prostitution are inevitable. They show that women want change and will begin the journey from commodity to entrepreneur if help is available.They also show that change begins from the bottom in the lives of women and of nations.
“One of the self-help group members, Meena, trafficked when she was 10 years old, found the courage within this group to rescue her daughter Naina, 15, from a brothel in Katihar,” Gupta said. “Today, three years later, Naina is studying to be a videographer, and Meena is a community mobilizer motivating women to set up more self-help groups. Naina’s one question to me was: As long as there are traffickers and customers there will always be other little girls that can be bought. I want to do something about it. Naina and Meena are both courageously standing up to traffickers. Now they challenge us to do so.”
Gupta will speak at 10:15 a.m. March 16 at Deering High School and at 11 a.m. March 19 at the Council on International Educational Exchange. At 7 p.m. March 19, Gupta will deliver the University of Maine School of Law’s fourth annual Justice for Women Lecture at the Abromson Community Education Center at 88 Bedford St.
Registration is required for the lecture at www.mainelawalum.org/justiceforwomen or by calling 780-4344.