Hoping to break the cycle

For many low-caste girls and women from nomadic cultures in India, prostitution is commonly passed down from mother to daughter and the act of pimping from father to son for survival. But along the Indo-Nepal border of Bihar – one of the poorest districts in India – mothers trapped in a life of prostitution campaigned with an anti-sex-trafficking NGO, Apne Aap, for a boarding school to protect their daughters from the same fate. The Kasturba Gandhi Girls School houses some 100 girls - many who are the first in their community to learn to read and write. They are admitted to the school at age nine - just when a trafficker is likely to prey upon them. The education helps break the cycle of intergenerational prostitution and curb their selling as child brides. Yet the girls are still vulnerable to sex traffickers who routinely prowl the outside of the school hoping to abduct them into a life of prostitution. These young girls live a life of peril.