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11 year old Prema, pictured, is forced by poverty to spend her childhood at risk of child prostitution. Across India, girls just like her are sexually abused through a system known as ‘devadasi’ and face a lifetime of exploitation.
‘Devadasi’ means ‘woman who serves God’. From as young as four years old girls like Prema are dedicated to the Hindu goddess of fertility. When they reach puberty, they are expected to sell themselves in servitude to the goddess.
Devadasis girls are often separated from their families and trafficked for sex to cities like Mumbai or Delhi. They are put at risk from HIV
and AIDS and experience years of abuse.
Prema comes from a Devadasi family. It is all too common for ‘dedication’ to be passed from mother to daughter. Poor lower-caste families, often living in extreme poverty, see the Devadasi system as their only means of survival. A lack of opportunities and severe discrimination against lower-caste families plays a key role in the continuing abuses of the Devadasi system, which remains prevalent in southern India despite being illegal since 1988.
Prema’s mother says, ‘I don’t want my daughters to have the life I have had. It was not a good life. Education is the only way for our children.’
Together with our supporters, EveryChild is breaking the cycle of abuse and family 
separation that results from practices like the Devadasi system. In India, we do this in the following ways:
- * Our child protection committees monitor the movement of children to prevent child trafficking
- * Our activity centres support and promote education so communities understand the injustices of abusive and exploitative systems like Devadasi
- * We run credit and income generation schemes so poor families aren’t forced to dedicate their children as Devadasis
- * We work with and lobby governments so they meet their commitments to vulnerable children
Please make a donation today to free girls like Prema from abuse and give them back their childhoods.
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