<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI was going to school but had to drop out when I was in Class VI,\u201d recalls Anoyara, who doesn\u2019t like to revisit her past. \u201cI don\u2019t like to talk about what I have left behind. I like to talk about how I am moving forward in life,\u201d she says with a conviction nobody can defy.<\/p>\n
Anoyara was barely 12 when she was trafficked to Delhi and forced into domestic labour, a hellhole she managed to run away from after a year. The transition from victim to victor was quick, a trait that has since defined her work as an activist.<\/p>\n
Anoyara reels off a list of activities she and her children\u2019s groups in the area have been involved in to spread awareness among villagers about child marriage and trafficking.<\/p>\n
We also learn that she is now the leader of as many as 80 children\u2019s groups across 40 villages in Sandeshkhali.<\/p>\n
These groups are all affiliated to Save the Children and the Dhagagia Social Welfare Society-run multi-activity centre, which Anoyara had joined when she was 13.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were only 10 groups when I joined and then I got more girls like me to join in. Now there are more than 1,600 children and I keep track of all of them!\u201d she smiles, holding up the Nokia C1 phone that she uses to keep in touch with her groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got this (the phone) three years ago as a prize in Ranchi. It helps me in my work because I can connect with people and children\u2019s groups can call me any time.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a fleeting moment, the child in the 18-year-old surfaces. \u201cWe don\u2019t have a television at home but I can listen to songs on this phone. Nachiketa and Shreya Ghoshal are my favourites,\u201d Anoyara says, breaking into a smile.<\/p>\n
She quickly goes back to describing how her groups operate around Sandeshkhali I and II and Minakhan, quizzing families on the whereabouts of children they have married off or sent out with strangers to work. \u201cYou know, my sisters were all married off at 13 or 14. None of us knew anything about child marriage at the time. For us, it was a custom,\u201d she recounts.<\/p>\n
Her sharp eyes soften as the conversation delves deeper into the subject. \u201cWhen you endure a lot of pain, trouble and misery, you take it as a challenge to overcome that. Adversity was my driving force. I realised that if I didn\u2019t bounce back from my ordeal, many more girls from Sandeshkhali would go missing. It became a mission and a challenge to myself to put a stop to exploitation of children and keep them from falling into the dangerous trap of trafficking or child marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n
But turning pain into power was far from easy for Anoyara, who had just stepped into her teens when her mission began.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore reaching out to people in the villages, I had to convince my own family to allow me to step out of the house. I reminded them of the pain they had gone through when I was away and how important it was to get other families to realise the dangers too,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Breaking the ice with villagers indifferent to \u201cworldly advice\u201d from a bunch of \u201cprecocious children\u201d was the next challenge. \u201cThey would say, \u2018What do you kids know? Who are you to tell us?\u2019 It was difficult to get the elders to pay attention to us but we never gave up. We would keep visiting them endlessly till they were convinced and clear about what we as children were trying to tell them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anoyara\u2019s courage came to the fore when she saved a girl from the clutches of touts and captured the men with help of a group of children her age. \u201cIn our village, people go to sleep by eight and children aren\u2019t allowed outside. I managed to get out of the house, take some friends along, chased the traffickers across the village, jumped canals and caught them. It was a huge risk but it changed the way elders looked at us.\u201d<\/p>\n
She went on to become a role model in her village and the adjoining areas, employing out-of-the-box strategies for her children\u2019s army to stalk, spot, seize and hand over traffickers to the authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur first rule is to follow any outsider we see in the village and pass the message to each other at the multi-activity centre. If we find them going into a house, two or three of us will playfully saunter in, hang around, eavesdrop on the conversation and then come back and report to the group,\u201d she reveals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we realise that the person has wrong intentions and could be a potential trafficker, we immediately meet the child in question and explain why they should not go away with the stranger. Then we go and meet the family as a group to help them understand too. And if we find them running away with a child, we will drag them to the centre of the village and tie them up.\u201d<\/p>\n
While some traffickers mend their ways and even join the child protection committees in the villages, others don\u2019t dare enter Anoyara\u2019s territory again.<\/p>\n
She takes you to a multi-activity centre to meet one of the children\u2019s groups with a spring in her step, smiling at the children who squeal: \u201cDidi! Didi!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow are you? Have you eaten? Why are you looking glum? Smile!\u201d Anoyara tells the children, later joining them in a game of Chinese Whispers.<\/p>\n
Keya Parvin, a 15-year-old member of one of the children\u2019s groups, has something to tell us. \u201cDo you know that once we children raided a wedding and stopped a family from marrying off a child? We have learnt so much from Didi. All of us want to be like her.\u201d<\/p>\n
The advantages of being a child activist are many, according to Anoyara. \u201cChildren will always be the first ones to know. And a child will always listen to someone her age and treat her like a friend. An adult would most likely try to instruct,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone from Maulvis and Brahmins to village heads and the police listen to us now. But that doesn\u2019t mean we are rebels. We respect elders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anoyara had been nominated for The International Children\u2019s Peace Prize in 2012, an award that went to Malala the next year. Last June, she travelled to Brussels to represent Save The Children in a Global Partnership for Education conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cAamar passport hobey, bideshey jabo\u2026bhabtei parini (I couldn\u2019t have imagined that I would have a passport and go abroad). I loved the glass buildings and ate a lot of chocolates. I also met Malala\u2019s father,\u201d recalls Anoyara, who idolises Malala.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be like her someday. I was so happy the day she won the Nobel. I keep news clippings of her whenever I find one.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Anoyara aspires to be like Malala, nothing gives her more satisfaction than bringing a missing girl back home or stopping a child marriage.<\/p>\n
She has made it a ritual to organise a big children\u2019s party whenever a trafficked child returns to Sandeshkhali. \u201cWe collect money and organise a feast of dal, bhaja and egg curry at the multi-activity centre. We sing, dance and play from morning till evening. And then, like a friend, we get the rescued child to talk to us, share her misery and join our group.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Anoyara, the joy comes from providing the love and protection that she had once yearned for. \u201cWhat I didn\u2019t get I try to give to others,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Alongside her busy schedule, Anoyara is studying for her graduation in a local college. She is the first from her village to go this far.<\/p>\n
An average day in her life means waking up at 6am, reading namaz and tutoring 25 children before leaving for college. Back home by 4pm, she goes around her village checking on the children.<\/p>\n
Like most teenage girls, Anoyara loves her trinkets, kajal and the colour pink. The one thing that irks her is the idea of keeping pets. \u201cI love cats and dogs but I don\u2019t like the idea of caging anyone, be it animals or humans. They should all be set free.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her refuge from the nightmare of being caged is a little diary full of songs and poems. They are all about human trafficking and tell you a bit about her suffering as a child. \u201cMon kharap holei aami likhi (I write when I am sad),\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Her ambition is to learn English, computers and cycling. \u201cI think these will make me braver,\u201d she says, not bothering to elaborate.<\/p>\n
Once again her eyes do the talking.<\/p>\n
Cross Posted from The Telegraph<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our very own Malala: trafficked at 12, crusader and global Girl Hero at 18. Anoyara Khatun was all of 13 when she led an army of children across a canal at midnight, caught a trafficker and saved a family on the verge of losing their teenage daughter to a trafficking ploy in the name of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/volunteers.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}