School for Justice, our chosen charity for Spring 2017

Director Rita Gupta introduces the LGFL Ltd charity for Spring 2017, and why we chose it.

Each year, LGFL Ltd supports a different charity every three months, enabling us to help a variety of worthy causes. Our chosen charity for the beginning of the year is the School for Justice in India.

The School for Justice is a remarkable school that trains girls who survive sex trafficking and forced prostitution to become lawyers. In turn, the girls aim to use their law degree to prosecute the traffickers, helping bring them to justice and prevent a new generation of girls falling victim.

Lata is one such girl. She was doing well at school until, aged 16, she married a boy who sold her into a brothel just two months after their marriage. Lata managed to escape and is now studying law through the School for Justice.

Exact figures on the level of human trafficking are hard to collate, but estimates by the UN suggest that there are 3 million sex workers in India. Of these, a shocking 40% are trafficked children from ethnic minorities or lower castes. In stark contrast, only 55 cases of sexual exploitation resulted in convictions in India last year.

That’s why the School for Justice is so important. The School was created through an innovative partnership between a top law school in India, and the Free A Girl Movement, an international organisation working to free girls from the control of sex traffickers.

The School is at an undisclosed location for security reasons, and currently there are 19 girls studying law, aged from 19 to 26. This is a long-term commitment for five or six years, culminating the girls’ graduating with law degrees with a particular focus on commercial sexual exploitation cases. There is also another School planned in Brazil.

To help these girls achieve their potential, LGFL Ltd has made a donation to the charity and will continue to watch the School for Justice movement progress with interest.

School for Justice, our chosen charity for Spring 2017

"Becoming a lawyer is my dream, and bringing justice to those responsible for forced child prostitution is my goal. I want to punish the men who did this to me."