User:Leenakejriwal/sandbox

MISSING Public Awareness Campaign
Founded	2015
Founder	Mrs. Leena Kejriwal
Type	12A, 80G
Focus	Raising awareness on sex trafficking
Location	73 Bentinck Street, Kolkata-700001, India;
Area served	India
Website	Missing Girls

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MISSING is a public awareness campaign which aims to sensitize the populace to the desperate plight of millions of little girls who are trafficked for sexual exploitation. MISSING is a four part public awareness campaign. It tackles the first P of the UN’s four P strategy on anti-trafficking i.e.prevention through advocacy and awareness. Sexual exploitation continues to be one of the most prevalent and least organized human rights violations in the world. Today, there are 3 million prostituted women in India, out of which 1.2 million are young girls. MISSING strongly feels that the time to communicate how sex trafficking affects our society is now. At the grass root level, MISSING’s work in rural Bengal, has helped save girls from the dark world of sexual exploitation and rehabilitate them, saving their future. At the urban level, MISSING: Game for a Cause, a new way to raise awareness, has won NASSCOM’s Indie Game of The Year Award and already has over 430,000 organic downloads across the world and making them game changers in this issue.

Objective

MISSING raises awareness amongst the populace of the millions of girls who are being trafficked into prostitution and bring this issue out of the closet by engaging and educating the public on the crime, and the damage it inflicts on its victims. MISSING makes the masses aware of the consequences of their actions, be it on the Internet or physical, which creates a demand for girls. MISSING creates awareness that translates into action taken by the government and the public. Awareness is essential in preventing this grievous crime and is key to beating traffickers.

How it Works

MISSING uses the power of art to raise awareness about human trafficking. Working locally and globally we are transforming public perceptions, educating individuals, communities and policy makers, and inspiring action to put an end to modern day slavery. Missing is a four-part initiative comprising:

Public Installations
An award winning mobile game
MISSINGIRLS stencil campaign
MISSING collective

History

During Leena’s career as a photographer, she was hit by a very important issue – sex trafficking. Today, there are 3 million prostituted women in India, out of which 1.2 million are young girls. The average age of recruitment of girls into prostitution is between 9 and 12 years of age. These are disturbing statistics. When Leena first started working with NGOs like Apne Aap, Hamari Muskan and New Light as an artist, she dealt with the issue by creating complicated installations within gallery spaces that brought up the dark realities of sex trafficking in a very graphic way. But this did not seem right. To create mass awareness, she realised she needed to distill the issue into a simple, engaging piece of art that spoke to everyone and transcended language and space. That is when her public art project MISSING emerged. MISSING was finally launched to great reviews at the India Art Fair in January 2014.

The work is larger than life black silhouettes of young girls placed against the urban skyline. Constructed from iron sheets, forged and painted pitch black, they seem like sharp, black cut out of the sky. Holes, into which, millions of girls disappear from the face of the earth. These expanded forms act as memorials to these young girls who have disappeared, vanished into thin air. It is hoped that these emblematic silhouettes generate curiosity, recognition and finally a sense of deep loss, recovering them to from the abyss of the sky. A recovery that inspires millions of others to act on behalf of the fate of those who have disappeared and are alluded by justice.

Biography

Leena Kejriwal, Photographer and Installation Artist.

Leena has been brand ambassador for Fuji India and an artist in residence in France in 2006/07. Her work has been published in various publications. Her seminal work “Calcutta: Repossessing the City” was launched as a book, published by Om Books International (2007) has been a best seller. Other photographic books to her credit are “In the shadows” co authored with Payal Mohanka in 2006 and “Flurys: The Cake That Walked” by Bachi Kakaria. “Her works were a part of Sotheby’s Spring Asian Art auction (March 2009). She created a 2 part photography installation, titled “East City” for The Birla Academy of Art and Culture (February 2010). The show has traveled and has been displayed in New Delhi as ”Entropic Sites” (Jan 2011) and to Iran as “I saw that which remained unseen” (June 2011). The last version of her installation was shown in a group show in Berlin in (June 2012), titled “ When Violence became decadent” and in Weimer in Germany (March 2013). Her work has always reflected her preoccupation with human trafficking and has found a new language in her public art work MISSING.

The works were launched at the India Art Fair in 2014 and since then she has run a successful crowdfunding campaign, July 2015, to gather support and spread awareness on the plight of young girls lost into the dark holes of sex trafficking.The MISSING Public art project has evolved since its conception into a four part project and uses the public as important stakeholders in the project. This through an online and offline campaign. The street stencil art project has gone viral since 2015, anyone who wishes to be a part can create the iconic silhouette on the walls of their city. The stencils can be seen across the country in metro’s like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and in the thick of the trafficking belt in Kishangunj, Bihar and Kokrajhar, Assam, Kultoli in West Bengal to name a few.

The MISSING game for the cause was launched in October 2016 and was recently chosen as the NASSCOM Indie Game of the year. The recently soft launched bengali version of the game has found great traction in Bangladesh, leading it to be featured on the google play store there and striking the #1 position in the popular free games category.

The Women and Child Development and Welfare ministry has joined hands the MISSING public art works to spread awareness on the issue. We are conducting an anti trafficking awareness drive in 3 districts of West Bengal with them. Targeting the high schools of these districts.

The project is traversing between the tangible and the intangible public spaces and connecting them through the underlying single purpose to generate curiosity, recognition and finally a sense of deep loss. With the silhouette remaining the constant.

Public art Installations

The works are larger than life black silhouettes of young girls placed against the urban skyline. Constructed from iron, forged and painted pitch black, they seem like sharp, black holes cut out of the sky. Holes, into which millions of girls, disappear from the face of this earth. These silhouettes will serve as a constant reminder to people about the millions of girls who have disappeared because of humanity’s negligence. These also work as memorials of the girls who have gone missing. The public art sculptures were launched at the India Art Fair and recently shown at the Pune Biennale.

Missing Stencil

The Silhouette is seen again and again across the country in the street stencil project. Students, artists and rescued girls, NGO’s are joining hands to put the MISSING silhouettes on the city walls. These silhouettes act as constant reminders of the missing girls as well as a remembrance of those gone. Missing has already created around 1000 stencils across villages and cities in India. MISSING has also been tying up with NGOs and organizations like Rotary Teach Programme, Yes Foundation, Rotaractors, iPartner India, Women and Child Development Ministry, iVolunteer and others who have an all-India presence, to spread the word on the project and the heinous issue of trafficking. The stencil is currently being used as a key awareness tool in a grassroots awareness campaign that MISSING is conducting along with the Women and Child Development Ministry. This campaign aims to spread awareness among highly vulnerable youth across rural communities in West Bengal.

MISSING Game for a Cause

MISSING is an interactive game designed to allow players to experience what a missing person goes through when she is trafficked into the inhumane and cruel world of prostitution, a world into which millions of girls are lost every year. The game is intended for a mature audience, and aims to expose the player to the dark world of human trafficking and raise awareness about it. The player gets into the shoes of the trafficked victim and experiences her frustration, vulnerability and helplessness, which shakes a player up. Missing’s game developer has travelled with Leena Kejriwal, the artist behind the MISSING campaign, to the different red light districts in Kolkata and to rural Bengal from where the girls get trafficked, to better understand the issue. He has been with Missing through the ground research phase and interacted with survivors to understand the core problems, tactics they have to resort to lure a customer and the plight of the trafficked girl.

Rural Awareness Campaign

We have seen that many youth in vulnerable areas are unaware of the threat of trafficking that is immanent to them. Therefore we feel that an important step in overcoming sex trafficking is to educate vulnerable populations of the threat it possess to them. There have been a series of talks in schools and colleges to ensure that the next generation is aware of the problem at hand. To back the installations and talks, we have been doing an important ground project in the form of a stencil project across the country, where students, artists and rescued girls, NGOs are working together to put the MISSING silhouettes on the city walls.

Livelihood Project

Our work in rural Bengal has led us to start a livelihood programme that benefits both survivors of trafficking as well as vulnerable girls in high-trafficking areas. We mentor girls for tailoring, computer programming, videography and soon in poultry farming. We hope that they can in their own right become mentors and role models for others in their community and take our call for End Demand and End Slavery to a new level. Given that poverty is one of the main factors driving the sex trafficking industry, providing economic opportunities to women in vulnerable communities we can reduce their risk of being trafficked.

Reach, Recognitions and Awards

The game has had over 410,000 organic downloads and an average rating of 4.3.
The MISSING Game for a Cause won the NASSCOM Indie Game of the Year award
It was launched in Bengali and featured as #1 game in the Playstore in Bangladesh
Missing operates in 6 countries Including India, USA, UK, Germany, Sudan, Tanzania.
Missing has stencil projects in 18 cities Anupshahr, Bengaluru, Berlin, Chennai, Delhi, Dodoma, Goa, Jaipur, Kishanganj, Khartoum, Kokrajjar, Kolkata, Los Angeles, London, Mumbai, Orange County, Pune and Salt Lake City
MISSING has collaborated with several NGOs like Association for the Promotion od Social Change(APSA), Jamghat, Nedan Foundation, Paint Our World, Pardada Pardadi Educational Society(PPES), Prerana, RAHAT, STOP, Udayan Care, Vatsalya, iVolunteer.