From the HIV battle to updates on individual lives, this newsletter’s reports are an attempt to discuss battles faced by women in sex work

Down a decrepit lane in Khetwadi, on the first floor of a municipal school and in a newly refurbished room, sits Manju Vyas. At a glance, the room appears to be part of the school’s administrative set-up, but it is from here that Vyas runs Apne Aap Women’s Collective (AAWC), in support of women whose lives are in some way affected by Kamathipura’s flesh trade.

While the objective of her foundation is to be a source of solace and support towards underprivileged women and especially those affected by the brothels, a major focus area of her organisation is to equip ‘sparrows’ or daughters of women in commercial sex work with vocational skills and support them to break out of the vicious cycle.

Another focus point of Manju’s AAWC lies in giving these ‘sparrows’, usually between the ages of six to 17 or 18 years, an educational environment at a formative age so as to decrease school drop out rates.

Also, in order to create bonhomie among AAWC’s beneficiaries and to spread knowledge of the recent developments of the group, the organisation has come up with a quarterly newsletter. “Every quarter we come up with a newsletter which talks about issues ranging from recent developments on the HIV front or recent happenings in the lives of our women,” says Vyas, a Kashmiri by birth but married into a Mumbai family. “There are many things happening around which is important to this community apart from happenings in the lives of our women. We try and put them all together in the newsletter for them,” says Vyas, who founded AAWC in 1999 after volunteering to teach English and computers to the children initially. “As a volunteer teacher, I observed their lives closely and saw that they had been literally forced into the profession and therefore I set up the organisation,” she says.

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