HELP (ANDHRA PRADESH)


A team of socially motivated individuals consisting of journalists, lawyers, doctors, social scientists etc., came together and decided to promote and strengthen the anti-arrack movement initiated by women in Nellore district in the year 1992. This team very intensively involved in the above task till the prohibition of arrack had been imposed in the state of Andhra Pradesh. At the meeting of the above team, which was held at Nellore in '93, it was unanimously decided that the members should form themselves into an association to attend to the welfare and protection of the Rights of the marginalized and vulnerable women and children in the society.

Thus, HELP came into existence in the year 1993. HELP with other like-minded NGOs in '94, initiated work on the issues of commercial sex workers' in the Coastal Andhra Pradesh.

The main objective of HELP is to stop child prostitution, trafficking and second- generation prostitution. The goal of HELP is promoting social justice and social development in relation to issues of crime and victimization. HELP focuses on the long-term social change goal within the context of organized prostitution in the red-light areas of Chilkaluripet, Guntur and Mangalagiri (Guntur District) and Ongole (Prakasam District) in Andhra Pradesh.

BCF with the support of Glaxo Smith Kline Consumer Health Care came forward to provide support for educational support was initiated from the month of October, 2006 and continued its support till December 2008. As the support of CRS was over by March 2008 due to their administrative reasons, Asha for Education San Francisco Chapter came forward to support SGBT home partially from August 2008 to July 2009. At this juncture BCF was kind enough to fill the gaps in Asha support and offered its support from January 2009 till December 2010.

By the Educational facilities provided by the HELP various boys and girls are getting qualified in different streams and getting employed; as recently some girls got the job in a Pharmaceutical Company. They are being vocationally trained and for this the required machinery costing 300000 was installed, basically girls are trained so that they can be kept away from prostitution. Various other activities are also conducted as and one of the activities is Bala Parliament in which children can ask various queries regarding the organization.

An exposure visit after the Independence Day was conducted to the seashore of Kothpatnam where they enjoyed a lot and played with children of fisher men over there. World Aids day was also celebrated and in which the children of HELP performed in skits and plays on the issue of AIDS, their performances were also appreciated by the chief guests.

HELP have conducted an Annual Refresher Training on Life skills during November 2010, in this training, impact assessment has been done on the skills which they have learnt previously and the changes are being observed in the children

.