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A great gift

Everybody tells me I’m hard to buy presents for. I guess it’s hard to get excited about stuff, especially when most of us have too much already. I have to say though, if a present can be likened to being able to see freedom at work in the lives of women, there is no Christmas present quite like it. A couple of weeks ago one woman gave me the best Christmas present ever. Let me explain.

While Gina was trapped in prostitution she had no room to call her own. She used to stay under another woman’s bed in a brothel. I guess there were times when she had to wait while her friend finished with a customer before she could emerge from underneath the bed. I presume when she had her own customers she was permitted to use the bed for a fee.

Fortunately, not long after joining Freeset, she was able to move into a new room with her six year old son, a place they could call their own. Well, you could call it a room but it’s more like a closet, a room created from the empty space underneath a skinny staircase. The highest point is four feet and the lowest – well – you get the picture. Still, Gina has been able to leave the sex trade and that’s worth celebrating.

There are times though when Gina, at her new job at Freeset, falls off asleep. You see, being H.I.V. positive means she is not always feeling Hi Everyone, on “top of the world.” Thankfully, the antiretroviral medication helps bring some stability to her health.

Good rooms are hard to come by in our community so I’m always on the lookout on behalf of Gina and other women. I mean, wouldn’t it be great for Gina to have a better room. Just two weeks ago Gina heard about a room coming available in the very building she was living in. With a little bit of help with the deposit she would have a much better living space for both her and her son. I could see just how much she wanted that room.

When the landlady approached me to see if Freeset wanted to take on that room I was faced with a huge dilemma. Gina wasn’t the only one in need. Women trapped in the sex trade often have lots of, what I call, parasites feeding off them - people who sit on their backsides doing nothing but using the women as a source of income. Their aim is keep them in the trade and live off them as long as they can. Of course these women can never be free until the parasites are dealt with.

Sadly, even though Putul has been at Freeset for a while, she is yet to be free from prostitution. Although this is hard to understand, her parasites are her mother and brother who pressurize her to stay in the trade.

Talking things through with Putul, we both agreed the best way forward was to find a new room away from her family parasites. Now you can see the dilemma. Who gets the room? Gina or Putul? And who gets to decide?

Knowing that Gina had her mind set on that room I decided to talk with her first. ‘Gina, I know you’d love to move to the bigger room and it would be great for you and your son. The difficulty is that Putul is still selling her body and desperately…” Before I could finish my carefully crafted sentence of explanation Gina interrupted with the biggest of smiles. “Give her the room. I have freedom now. I’m free and she’s not – please give the room. I’d love for her to have the room.”

My Christmas present: To be further down the track in understanding what real freedom is. I guess sometimes we think freedom is the absence of conflict and pain and the ability to have total control over our lives. Gina has neither and yet can stand before God and others and say I’m free. Of course, it helps me understand a little more about this baby born in a stable who didn’t have a room either.

Kerry

Freeset Tees in New Building

Freeset tees was in one small room with 20 women. We were packing on top of boxes and sewing with the women smooshed together. Now, we are free to move about and have a whole room dedicated to finishing, checking, and packing. We LOVE our new space. It is clean, airy, and helps us all stay organized. You can check out what the new place looks like by watching our building update video number 3.

Thank you to everyone who helped get us into the new building. We see it as a true blessing.

Karl's bit

Many businesses found 2009 a pretty daunting year. For Freeset the rapid growth of the past 4 years (averaging over 30% per annum) meant that the sudden drop in orders was very unsettling - not least because we now need about 800 bags a day to keep our staff busy. The first half of the year was particularly difficult with the factory shutting for a total of 12 days. The second half of the year saw some resurgence in demand which has kept us reasonably busy. However, we are not out of the woods yet and with more women coming in for training almost every day - it becomes increasingly critical to build our sales base. We are very grateful for the partnership we have with our distributors, many of whom sacrificially invest of their time and resources helping us to build markets and supply sales opportunities.

Often we are contacted by people asking how they can help Freeset. First of all – keep buying our products! Tell your friends about Freeset, share the story, encourage others to consider a Freeset purchase. Many of our distributors carry stock of Freeset bags which are available for sale online. If you are part of a network (work, church, club etc) perhaps you can encourage them to consider a Freeset bag as a way of adding value to their next event or to promote their organization.

If you have any questions contact one of our local distributors or feel free to drop us a line at and let us know how we can help you.

Thanks for being a part of our Freedom Journey.

Karl

Download Jan 2010 Newsletter (1MB Pdf)


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It was with great sadness that we said farewell to our much-loved friend Bono-da on Monday.

He leaves behind his wife Mena, who is a pillar of strength at Freeset. Right now she is spent from the trauma of losing her love. She has the support of her friends and community as she grieves.

Bono-da and Mena loved each other very much. Back in the day he was a gangster, but Mena helped to calm him into a man of great character. Whereas when he was young he commanded respect through the threat of violence, he came to be respected simply because he cared. He was loved and admired by both young and old.

He was a huge asset to Freeset, particularly in the early days after we moved in to the first new building at the end of 2004. He was connected to his community and had his finger on the pulse of the local mood. Not everyone in the area loves Freeset and Bono-da was often able to diffuse situations that might have caused a lot of trouble.

Around 18 months ago he suffered a serious stroke that left him paralyzed down his right side. From that time on he was confined to his bed and his body was slowly but steadily shutting down. He grew progressively miserable as he developed bed sores and his body stiffened. We had to watch as the man we had grown to love was slowly slipping away.

Bono-da had a largely toothless grin, but he was good at sharing it. Up until he had his stroke, if you visited Freeset you couldn’t miss him. He would greet you with a big warm smile at the gate, or you’d have to sneak past him because he’d fallen asleep.

We will miss our friend greatly and the way that he enriched our lives.


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It's Official! Today we completed the paper-work and were handed the keys to our new premises. It is a large property with plenty of room to allow for the next phase of Freeset's growth. It is conveniently located just across the street from our existing building.

Now the work of renovating begins as we turn a residential property into a productive manufacturing space. Much of the building has been neglected for some time and has become home to many of the local pigeons.

We are excited by this purchase because it means we will have the space to take on more women so they can be free from the sex trade, and freedom is what we are all about!


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Despite the recession, we know that women trapped in the sex trade always need freedom.  We also have faith that the economy will pick up and our customers will continue to support us.  So, get the word out about Freeset Bags so we can continue to offer more and more women FREEDOM.  Freeset can only exist with great customers like you.


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We served fair trade coffee and talked about how other businesses and people all over the world were celebrating along with us for fair trade.  After explaining what fair trade means, we ate snacks, and watched “The Incredibles.”  It was a pretty hot night, but we still had a great turnout and were able to celebrate with the rest of the world. 

If you want to see what happened in other areas for World Fair Trade Day, visit: www.worldfairtradeday09.org

Watch a video clip of World Fair Trade Day.


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The FTF conference was very informative and I met some life long friends of Freeset. There were people there from all different companies representing many different products from coffee to scarves. We talked all about Fair Trade break on May 9th. If anyone wants to be a part of a world record fair trade coffee break, they can visit the fair trade resource networks website at www.ftrn.org.

Kelsea
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Newsletter - March 2009

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Hi there,

I’ve always tried to start the Newsletter off in a vibrant, energetic way. I guess the thinking is it’s harder for a person to read the thing if they don’t engage straight away. And yet this time I find myself needing to start on a different note. Sarada finally succumbed to the tuberculosis, hepatitis and H.I.V. Aids that had ravaged her body. Freedom short lived is a hard thing to celebrate, especially for the Freeset family. As we all sat down in the courtyard sharing stories soaked in tears there was little to be thankful for. The theme of a troubled life ran deep as each one shared. Trafficked from Nepal Sarada’s family have no idea where she has been for many years and may never learn she has died.

Sitting on an unused bag of sand used for making concrete amongst the Freeset family the same theme ran through my mind too. I pictured Sarada in her Sonagacchi brothel in what must be one of the worst rooms I’ve ever visited. The door being the only source of light meant the air was stale and musty. Sarada couldn’t afford electricity and I remember thinking a fan to circulate even the bad air would have helped. And then there was the stream of water that ran across her floor, perhaps the result of a rusty old drainpipe, leaking dirty water from the rooms above.

Standing at just 4ft 11inches and never saying much Sarada was easy to miss in a crowd. Her needs tended to bring her to the fore more than anything else. Despite a new, dry room with a light and fan she always struggled. Through unwise spending her Freeset wage never lasted the month and no matter how hard we tried to help her manage we were always buying her food. Her two boys, Abhijit (2) and Omit (6) paid the price of a mother who couldn’t even look after herself.

At the crematorium Sarada’s body joined the line of those waiting to be cremated. Her body was in line again but this time she wasn’t a lonely figure from a dark dingy room standing with others selling her body. This time she was joined by 150 others as her Freeset family gathered to mourn and say goodbye. This time she was somebody important in that line, someone who will be missed, remembered and honoured even if her Freedom was short lived.

Saying goodbye in Kolkata is never a private affair. Hundreds of strangers gather together in absolute despair at losing their own loved ones, as the Hindu Priest goes about methodically administering the last rites. And yet, amongst all the chaos and turmoil, in that last opportunity to say goodbye, the Hindu Priest was upstaged as Sarada’s family burst out in prayer and song. For the first time, there was a sense that for Sarada there is, and will be freedom at last.

One day I’d like to bury a Freeset family member who has died of old age and lived out years of freedom, so many years that we’ll struggle to remember any bondage at all. That’s something worth sticking around for.

Kerry


Download March Newsletter. (2.3MB pdf)
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Funny thing, as a Kiwi growing up with summertime in Decembers, I used to dream of white Christmases. Such is power of the media – American movies and Bing Crosby’s version of White Christmas.

Songs influence our thinking - perhaps more than we are willing to admit so it took me a while to realize Jesus’ birth wasn’t a Silent Holy night with everything calm and bright at all. He might have been Away in Manger with no crib for a bed but the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes the little Lord Jesus no crying he makes seems to be a bit of a stretch? A non crying Jesus?

And then there’s the prediction that the new born savior would have royal blood: back to King David and further back to Abraham. That bit’s all good but a closer look at the family tree reveals a tainted lineage of foreign blood and colorful characters. Judah was about to have his daughter in law Tamar burned to death for being a “whore” before discovering he was the one who had used her in this way.

Out of the act prostitution came Tamar’s twins, the ancestral line of Jesus. Skip a few generations to King David’s great great grandmother Rahab, the sex worker from Jericho and the list of hero’s grow. That’s right – hero’s. Judah acknowledged that Tamar was way more in the right than him as she fought for justice and Rahab is proclaimed a woman of faith in the book of Hebrews.

In our Kolkata neighbourhood silent, holy nights are an impossibility and most people have never seen snow let alone a white Christmas. The cattle are not lowing, they’re roaming because that’s what they do and there’s plenty of crying hungry babies born to homeless mums (moms) on the street. It appears to me this might be a little more like the one Jesus was born into than the one we sing about.

Maybe the song Mary sang after she found out she was pregnant is helpful: he has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

And, as for some of the hero’s from this community who are not Jesus’ ancestors but his sisters.

• Bashanti has just completed 1 year free from alcohol and is now mothering and helping Deepali to break free of the same addiction.

• Rupa, full of vision continues to lead the Freeset community. Anyone who comes to Freeset and talks to Rupa hears of her vision to see all 10,000 of her neighbours set free.

• Saraswathi travels from the other side of Kolkata to Freeset every day. At 22 she has been in the sex trade for more than 4 years and having just started is working hard in training.

• Pinky, six years old and mostly blind leads the Freeset community in prayer, in fact it’s hard to give others a turn such is her motivation. She’s just started school and came 2nd in her class test.

• Sweety, so young to have two boys at school and at 4ft 10 is a tower of strength.

God among us: lifting up the lowly.

Have a Merry Christmas. Thank you for being part of the Freedom journey in 2008. We look forward to walking with you in 2009.

Kerry

Download the Christmas Newsletter. (800KB pdf)
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Newsletter - 4 December 2008

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Walking through the Freeset building one thing is clear, we’re not just on about bags. A simple question is sufficient to dispel any doubts: “Amader Babsha Kishe” (What’s our business?). The reply comes from the women quickly and in unison – “Mukti” (freedom).

When Mina & I walk around Sonagacchi (and other red light areas) the same word is on our minds. Mina does most of the talking and I’m there to support her. The women are so used to men strolling past trying to decide which one of them they will choose they are surprised when we want to talk about their freedom. After all, most of them are doing what they have to do to survive and the question of freedom is a luxury they dare not think about. Then they get to hear a freedom story first hand as Mina tells her story again and again to anyone who will listen. It doesn’t take long for a few women to gather around Mina as her story unfolds. Then the questions come: “Do you think I could come to Freeset? Will you take me? Do you think I could learn to sew? How much does it pay? What about my children?” Some have the courage to take the first step of visiting Freeset while others can’t quite grasp the idea that they could be free just yet. For some, freedom is not a choice that is theirs to make because they don’t own their bodies.

On 1st December twenty new women began three months training and started their freedom journey at Freeset. They represent a number of red light areas around the city as word has got around that freedom is on offer. Some of you may be thinking, how can you take on more women during a recession when many are being laid off? We do need to be careful and are minimising the risk. We live as a community in tension where business needs to be healthy and freedom must be on offer to the 10,000 women who “still stand in line.” When you think about your role in selling Freeset products, please don’t under estimate it – your ongoing business means ongoing freedom. How’s that for motivation?

Download the Newsletter as a PDF (752KB).

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