Story of Apne Aap

Apne Aap was founded by twenty-two women from Mumbai’s red light district with a vision of a world where no woman can be bought or sold. The women were the subject of Emmy Award winning journalist, Ruchira Gupta’s documentary The Selling of Innocents, which exposed the trafficking of women and girls from Nepal to India. During the production of the film the women formed a connection with each other and with Ruchira that broke the isolation in their lives and gave them the strength to resist their situation.

When filming completed, the group continued meeting informally in parks and on benches. The respect they received when acting as a group and the strength of their collective bargaining inspired them to create a legal structure to support their vision and Apne Aap registered as an NGO in 2002 in Mumbai, India. Through the efforts of a board member, Apne Aap was given a room in an abandoned municipal school on Falkland Street – the heart of Mumbai’s red light area. This room was a safe place to meet, chat, sleep, stitch torn clothes, bathe and receive mail. It was also a place to hold meetings and classes.

In the following years Apne Aap’s vision and impact grew. Members reached out to other women trapped in prostitution and organized self-empowerment programs in Bihar, Delhi and West Bengal. The connected groups of survivors turned their focus to dismantling the system of prostitution by calling for Parliament to create more severe laws that punish buyers of prostituted sex.

Though all of the twenty-two founding women have since passed away from hunger, suicide, and AIDS-related complications, Apne Aap’s work continues. Self-empowerment groups across the country meet at Apne Aap community centers, safe spaces where women and girls can gather, access education, improve their livelihood and receive legal rights training. Today, Apne Aap’s work reaches over 10,000 women and girls and continues towards making the vision of the founding twenty-two women come true.