Mennonite Weekly Review

Piya was forced into a marriage with an unfaithful man.

Disowned and beaten by her father in Bangladesh after she divorced her husband, Piya tried making money by sorting through trash and giving blood until she became too ill. Eventually she began sex work because it gave her a reasonable income, even though it led her into many abusive relationships.

Mitu’s husband from an arranged marriage was a drug addict, who also gambled and misused alcohol. He beat her and offered no financial support. After a tumultuous four-year relationship with him, she resorted to sex work to support herself and her son and daughter.

Asha was raped by a neighbor and then beaten by her mother because she was raped. Asha escaped to her uncle’s house, where she was raped again. After much pleading, Asha was allowed back home, but she was so filled with rage and frustration she turned to sex work for three years.

As desperate as they were, these women were not willing to accept the role that society in Bangladesh assigned sex workers — despised and scorned, with no hope of redemption. They wanted a job with dignity, even if it meant they didn’t earn as much money.

With the encouragement of Shourav Nari Kallyan Shongha, an organization that helps women within the trade, Mennonite Central Committee Bangladesh created an alternative job-training program for sex workers in March 2008. Piya, Mitu and Asha were among the first 26 women accepted into the eight-month program. Their names have been changed for their safety.

The program, called Pobitra, means “holiness, sanctity, the fresh cleanliness of a newborn.” The name was intended “to remind the women that they were not bound to labels of ‘dirty,’ ‘filthy’ or ‘spoiled,’ ” said Robin Seyfert, an MCC worker from Salem, Ore., who is in charge of MCC Bangladesh’s Health Education and Social Services programs, including Pobitra.

To become part of Pobitra, the women made a public commitment to stop sex work and to embrace the new opportunities in the program. Bita Barua oversees the program and Nipa Dutta is the training supervisor. Both are MCC staff members.

Learning respect

Each woman was given $1.50 per day, a caring environment, handicraft training, and teaching about health and hygiene, mental health, human rights, peace and literacy, Seyfert said. Staff insisted that the women treat each other with respect, although that was not easy to learn.