Kalinga Fellowship 2019 - A Novel Initiative to Stop Trafficking of Women and Children

/ -- The global Kalinga Fellowship 2019, a novel initiative to stop trafficking of women and children, is being held in New Delhi from December 9 - 13, 2019. Founded by three partner organizations - Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Bhubaneswar, FXB India Suraksha and the Bridge Institute, the fellowship seeks to advance target 5.2 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals - 'Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation'.

Kalinga Fellowship 2019, organized in partnership with National Commission for Women, Government of India, is a tri-sector global fellowship of business leaders, government officials and civil society leaders, designed to be a concrete step towards establishing a common and shared vision and a living example of converting the SDG blueprint 'to go from the world we have, to the world we want to have'.

The first fellowship was convened in April 2017 in Odisha. In 2018, the Fellowship was held in Telengana with the support of Telengana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society and Prajwala. Sewa International and UN Women have joined the Kalinga Fellowship as partners this year and have helped support the organization of the Fellowship in Delhi.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, Prof. Achyuta Samanta, Member of Parliament and Founder, KIIT & KISS said, "Empowerment of women should be ingrained at every level of every organization across government, business and social sector. Only then we will move forward as a country and an economy. My home state Odisha is moving forward with great momentum to ensuring our mothers and daughters participate fully in the highest decision making bodies in state and country. Gender quality is at the core of the philosophy at KIIT and KISS." Shyam Parande, Secretary, Sewa International asserted that the menace of human trafficking can be curbed only by providing equal opportunities of learning and employment to women, along with gender sensitization across all age-groups.

The Kalinga Fellows will participate in an immersive, facilitated, five-day strategy event where they will learn the most contemporary leadership methods, collaborate with each other and collectively push their solutions and strategies forward. In addition, every business, government and civil society leader will be matched with a professional leadership coach, for one year afterwards. The Kalinga Fellowship 2019 will set forth a solution based road map to combat human trafficking, developed and owned by leaders across civil society, corporate and the government, informed Mamta Borgoyary, CEO, FXB India Suraksha. Jane Sassienie, Director of Development at Bridge and Founding Director of Bridge Institute stated that the fellowship will equip the people who want to change the world with the leadership skills to do so.

This year the focus of Kalinga Fellowship is to visualize a road map to eradicate the social malaise of human trafficking. Human trafficking, today, is the third largest organized crime in the world, after arms and drug trafficking. "Our purpose is to bring extraordinary people together to solve the world's seemingly impossible problems", added Simon McKenzie (Mac), Director of Bridge, and co-founders of the Bridge Institute.

The Fellowship is being attended by over 80 participants of diverse backgrounds, from senior Police and Government officials to civil society and corporate leaders from across India and the world. Nearly 20 students from different states of India and several survivors of trafficking are also part of the Fellowship. The fellows will visit and interact with Child Welfare Committee, Anti-human trafficking Unit, National Commission for Women, CHILDLINE, UN Women, and organisations working with survivors of trafficking and 2nd generation of victims of commercial sexual exploitation. Fellows will also interact with a technology team at IBM to understand how technology can play a vital role in combating trafficking of women and children.

The Kalinga Fellows team will create prototype solutions, seek feedback, fine-tune their strategies and solutions and present a national roadmap to end trafficking of women and children to the National Commission for Women for implementation at National level on 13th December 2019.

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