Freeset

Driven by poverty or dragged by trafficking, many women of Kolkata, India are left with only one option for provision: To sell their bodies on the streets of the infamous sex district.

Enter Freeset! Freeset is a fair trade operation in the business of freedom that empowers women trapped in the sex trade through the employment of making quality jute bags and organic t-shirts.

The business originated after a naïve move from New Zealand found Kerry & Annie Hilton and their family in the center of the red light district, and their eyes opened to a world of hopeless women in need of an income alternative. In 2001 Freeset humbly entered the scene with 20 brave women who dared to leave the sex trade behind for the hope and dignity offered to them by a couple of strangers.

Today more than 150 women have made the same choice to make the journey to FREEDOM.

At wages double to that of comparable employment, along with health insurance, pension plans, education opportunities, and child care, the women not only are equipped to change their own lives, but to bring freedom to their families as well.

Profits for Freeset are turned into funds to further grow the business to bring more women the opportunity of a life beyond the streets.

Sonagacchi

Sonali stands in a doorway… waiting. The smile on her face? Just part of the job. Stolen from her village, she was dragged - wide-eyed and innocent - to the back streets of Calcutta and sold into prostitution by a stranger. At the age of just thirteen
she was drugged and then raped by the first customer.

Bashanti stands in line each day thanks to her mother. She was the one sacrificed so the rest of the family could eat.

This is life in Sonagacchi, where women stand shoulder to shoulder, as far as the eye can see. Twenty thousand men visit this place daily, eyeing up lines of women as if shopping in a supermarket.

There’s nothing glamorous about this place. Sonali and Bashanti are among the ten thousand women who work in Sonagacchi the oldest and largest of Calcutta's many sex districts. Some women are paid as little as US50 cents per customer – just enough to buy a simple meal.

Society shuns these women. They are branded “outcasts" for life. They didn't choose prostitution - it chose them.

Bring up the subject of prostitution and most people will usually think of sex, exploitation, or maybe AIDS. But for those who control prostitution it’s really about money - it's about BUSINESS.