Unverified non-profit organisation

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Apne Aap Women Worldwide (Apne Aap) is a non-governmental organization which was founded in 2002 by twenty-two women from Mumbai’s red light district with a vision of a world where no woman can be bought or sold.

Apne Aap’s mission is to increase choices for at-risk girls and women in order to ensure access to their rights, and to deter the purchase of sex through policy and social change.

Apne Aap is “a grassroots movement to end sex trafficking”. Hence, its legal consultants and para-legal staff provide training to women and adolescent girls on issues ranging from trafficking, domestic violence, property and matrimonial laws, in order to provide the women with basic legal knowledge about their rights guaranteed by the Constitution and other relevant national and international laws, so that they are able to access the available remedies when confronted with violence and abuse.

With the goal to build a world where every woman and girl can realize her full potential, Apne Aap focuses its work on 4 actions:
- Organizing small groups of women and girls who are at the risk of or are affected by trafficking into self-empowerment groups
- Connecting survivors’ voices directly to the political and legislative process and advocate for policy that will enable every woman to be free
- Educating the public about the systemic realities of human trafficking
- Advocating for the need to stem the demand side of sex trafficking, because men must actively participate in creating a future where no woman or girl is bought or sold

Apne Aap believes that learning could have a therapeutic effect on the victims/survivors of trafficking and prostitution and help them disassociate the stigma, guilt, shame and the sense of being inferior and impure that is deeply imbedded in their consciousness. Hence the organization has involved children and women in many such cathartic activities such as:
- Painting classes with occasional exhibition of the art work;
- Camps, like the diwali shivir camp, to inculcate the value of togetherness, team spirit and peer support;
- Book making workshop;
- Unique creative art therapy on HIV/AIDS that addressed the myths associated with the disease;
- Community group discussions are used as a platform to provide peer support in solving individual’s problems.

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Year established