Each year, roughly around 2 million women and children, most of them younger than 10 years, are bought and sold around the globe. On coming to know all these infamous things surrounding the globe, Sunitha Krishnan showed a big heart.
She is a popular Indian social activist chief functionary and co-founder of Prajwala, which is an NGO non-governmental organization that rescues, sex-trafficked victims into society. Krishnan plies her trade in the areas of anti-human trafficking and social policy. Her organization identified as “Prajwala” shelters rescued women as well as children and set up one of the largest rehabilitation homes in India. Let’s take a moment to appreciate Sunitha Krishnan.
Sunitha Krishnan was awarded India’s fourth highest civilian award the Padma Shri in 2016. Hailing from Bangalore was born to Palakkad Malayali parents Raju Krishnan and Nalini Krishnan. Her early life had lots of travelling where she experienced new things moving from one place to another with her father, who worked with the Department of Survey that empathises with making maps for the entire country.
Krishnan’s liking for social work became apparent when she was just eight years, she started teaching dance to mentally challenged children. When she was 12, she was running schools in slums for the economically backward sections of the society.
At 15, while working on a neo-literacy campaign for the Dalit community, she was gang-raped by eight men. Those men did not like the way a woman was interfering with what they called “man’s society.” They beat Sunitha so badly that she is partially deaf in one ear. However, her shocking incident served as the driving force for what she does today.
Sunitha Krishnan studied in Central Government Schools in Bangalore and Bhutan. After acquiring a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences from St. Joseph’s College in Bangalore, Krishnan did her MSW (medical & psychiatric) from Roshni Nilaya, Mangalore.
In 2009, Krishnan’s speech during an official TED India conference regarding the cause of human trafficking at Infosys Campus, Mysore, has since inspired over 2.5 million viewers globally.
“She brought the house down in Mysore today. And by that, I mean that she broke hearts and moved people to action. The audience listened painfully to some of the stories of the more than 3,200 girls she has rescued, girls who had endured unimaginable torture and yet, somehow, nevertheless found the will to heal and thrive… Her strong voice and powerful body language ensured that no one could claim to have misunderstood her points.”