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After-hours on Thursday night there was a fire at Freeset in the screen printing department upstairs. The building and some equipment suffered only minor damage and a few t-shirts were destroyed. Thankfully no-one was hurt. The fire extinguishers did the job - along with the people using them of course. Kerry Hilton commented, “Although we had a fire and that's not good at all - I was proud to be part of a team that pulled together so well. I was also encouraged as I walked through the community crowd (hundreds) gathered around our building (I was one of the last there as I was out) - quite a few of them told me not to worry - everything was okay - including the police. I sensed the community was with us rather than wanting to blame us for the fire - a nice change.” He concluded, “Although it could have been worse, we do need to look at ourselves to see what we can do better in the future”.
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Download April 2010 Newsletter [800KB PDF].

A different perspective on the economic crisis

Chili Davis said: Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. It makes sense to those of us getting on a bit. To be able to hold on to, despite advancing years, some of the good things about being young for just a little while longer.

I can remember playing rugby with a whole bunch of guys in New Zealand, all of us well past our prime. Although older, I could remember how to play and move like it was yesterday. The problem was that although my mind was fresh my body wasn’t. The body wouldn’t do what my mind thought it could. But, it was fun.

What isn’t fun, is walking around Sonagacchi watching older women putting their bodies on sale knowing most customers will pass them by. Many look much older than they actually are. Looking worn and tired they drag their bodies onto the street day after day just to get enough to eat.

And then there are those at the opposite end of their lives. Little girls forced to use their immature bodies in ways they should never have to. Some of them are so young their owners can’t put them on the street. Locked in rooms that become their entire world, customers are escorted to them having just purchased their virginity for the 100th time.

So, I’ve been asking myself, why is it that younger girls are hitting the streets in greater numbers than I’ve ever seen in ten years? Why are Madams risking unwanted attention by putting 15 & 16 year old girls on display at street level? The only conclusion I can come to is that business is not good. The economic crisis has impacted the sex industry just like other sectors. Fewer customers mean greater competition and lower rates. Good for the customer, in a sad sort of way, but not so good for those who own and operate brothels – let alone young girls who are forced to service more customers to make up for the shortfall. For the sake of business, Madams are putting their merchandise right in front of the customer’s nose at street level. Of course the unwanted police attention has to be paid off and it is built into the service cost.

In the last month, two 13 year old girls have come to Freeset looking for work. The problem is we can’t legally employ girls under 16 so we can’t offer them a job. But, listen to what they will be hearing, “No we can’t give you a job because you are too young. The only option you have is to sell that young body of yours”. Clearly this is not the answer and we are working on alternatives. The problem is – every day 13 year old girls are entering the trade.

A couple of weeks ago a 25 year old woman came to Freeset desperately wanting to be free. Her husband had put her into a brothel. She wants to work at Freeset but can’t leave her three daughters aged 11 ½, 9 & 7 alone at home. Her husband has already threatened to sell the oldest one.

Growing old is mandatory, for some there is no option but to grow up fast.

Kerry

New Trainees

Almost every day women who want to be free from the trade come to Freeset. They sit in the courtyard and wait to be considered. It’s easy to tell who they are because they look nervous and don’t smile. We wish we could hire them all.

However, there’s quite a bit more to the process than just giving them a job. Their particular circumstances have to be looked at from many angles. They are visited at home to evaluate their situation. Are they currently in the sex trade or in great danger of entering the trade?

Is there a madam, a mother, brother, etc., who receives their earnings and might not want them to be free? Do they owe money to a loan shark or landlord? Do they need to move out of a brothel to a different room before they can leave the trade? It’s a complicated process. Kerry and Mena put a great deal of effort into evaluating individual situations and helping each woman untangle the knot that is her life. Twenty-five trainees have nearly completed their three months training program and are moving into bag production soon.

Building Update

What began as a casual comment on a YouTube Freeset Building Update has reaped outstanding results! Team after team have arrived in the past couple of months to work on the renovations of Freeset’s newly purchased building.

Construction project managers, electricians, civil engineers, builders, construction supervisors; plus a whole lot of others just willing to work hard, sweat buckets, and do whatever’s needed! A lot has been accomplished, but there’s still a very long way to go.

So, tradesmen, we can still use you!

The Meyers Arrive

We are pleased to welcome Neels and Esme Meyer to the Freeset community. The Meyers have a head start on their adjustment to Kolkata since they spent eight years in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. They are fluent in Hindi but hope to add Bengali to their assortment of languages soon. Neels and Esme are originally from South Africa, so Bengali will be their fourth language!

In Varanasi, Esme managed a retail homefinishing store and coffee shop that employed women and men in intense poverty. Her managerial skills are being put to good use in Freeset’s T-shirt unit. Esme is very creative and loves making things beautiful.

Neels formerly managed a screen printing unit in Varanasi that produced paper products and T-shirts. Obviously it won’t be difficult to keep him busy at Freeset as well! He is of great use already in the screen printing department and is always ready to help wherever it’s needed.

Their reaction so far? “We love being part of Freeset and watching the growth of the ladies!”

Learning opportunities

English lessons and guitar classes are currently being offered to all of the women in the Freeset community who are interested. They love to practice as they walk past English speakers!





Check out the new Freeset promo video! Hear women talk about how working at Freeset has impacted their lives.

New design for 2010!

Check out our new range of bags for 2010*. Shown here is the all new "Memento" bag with cane handles and the wildflower print.

*Sorry but not all bags are available in all regions.


Please contact if you have any questions or feedback regarding this newsletter.



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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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