By Matters India Reporter
Mumbai, Nov. 4, 2019: Hasina Kharbhih, founder of a global program that tries to check human trafficking and exploitation worldwide, has received this year’s Mother Teresa Memorial Award for Social Justice.
Meghalaya-born Kharbhih received the award on November 3 at the Harmony International Conference in Mumbai.
The award given by the Harmony Foundation recognizes selfless and intrepid individuals and organizations who have channelized their energies and creativities towards social justice, peace and harmony.
Kharbhih has been working to provide sustainable livelihood in a safe environment for women and children for more than 30 year. She is the founder and managing director of Impulse Social Enterprises and founder chair of Board of Impulse NGO network.
In a letter to Kharbhih, the foundation said it acknowledged her “relentless and passionate work and ongoing efforts” to free the world from modern day slavery practices.
It saluted her for partnering with government and civil society groups to rehabilitate 72,442 survivors of human trafficking in northeastern India, Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Her success has earned her “worldwide recognition reminiscent of the ‘Emancipation Proclamation’ and ‘40 acres and a mule’ issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 and 1865,” the foundation’s letter noted.
“The reintegration program of the survivors into mainstream society by empowering them to live with dignity and equipping them with traditional skills for sustainable livelihood is highly commendable,” the foundation stated.
A day before the award ceremony, the Ashoka Fellow and Aspen ILI Fellow spoke on ‘Combating Contemporary forms of slavery’ at the Harmony International Conference in Mumbai.
What began as Kharbhih’s mission in Meghalaya has now become a global program that aims to put an end to human trafficking and exploitation worldwide.
The award, instituted in the memory of Mother Teresa in 2005, is endorsed by Sister Prema, the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, Kolkata.
Some former recipients are Malala Yousufzai, the Nobel laureate Pakistani teenager who has become a global icon for the education of the girl child; The Dalai Lama; current Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo; Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad; former Deputy Speaker of the United Kingdom’s House of Lords Baroness Caroline Cox; and Aid Groups such as Medicines Sans Frontiers (commonly known as Doctors Without Borders) , the largest volunteer medical organization worldwide, and White Helmets, which provided aid to war-ravaged Syria.
The Harmony Foundation, an international NGO founded in October 2005 by Abraham Mathai, aims to established social cohesion between various communities, castes and work towards the benefit of all the communities without discrimination on the grounds of religion, caste, creed, gender or region.
The foundation’s patrons include eminent filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, former federal minister P.C. Thomas, Tushar Gandhi, great grand-son of Mahatma Gandhi, and Mihir Desai, a senior counsel in Bombay High Court.