Sponsorship

Children of sex workers are born in the brothel without any acknowledged father. But according to the brothel customers, many children have a fictive father who is generally their mother’s fixed customer also known in brothel slang as babu or so called husband. He is the mother’s lover and he can run some businesses inside the brothel or just have his own wife and children outside. Inside the brothel he has the role of husband and father. In order to protect his reputation, the children address his as uncle, rather than baba that is father.

In patriarchal society such as the Bangladeshi one, the lack of a real father figure in the lives of brothel children has deeply negative effect on their emotional development and well being. Furthermore, they need the name of their father to get admitted in public schools.

Besides, even if they have a real father, mostly all the times children do not have any kind of relationship with them. Their fathers are ashamed of their mother’s profession and hence they prefer to break off all the relations. Fathers are not responsible to taken care of their children any expenditure.

Children of sex workers are still deprived of their rights to education. Few of them are enrolled at government schools. The main reason is that they are born without any acknowledged father. Furthermore, they are discriminated because of their mother’s profession. 94 percent of the children of sex workers do not go to school. Though they like to go to school, the other boys and girls from village neglect them. In spite of being classmates, village boys attacked them in groups on the way to return home and called them “son/daughters of prostitutes”. The village boys/girls call the girls “daughter of prostitute or earthworm in the womb of prostitute”.  Sometimes teachers discriminate them from village students. The village youths and elders on the way tease adolescent girls. The girls of sex workers could not protest such misdeeds only because of the threat of physical torture. When the children go outside for pay games they are treated as laughing elements. Girls suffer more as they treat as prostitute. Boys enjoy the facilities to go anywhere they wish; girls remain closed within the brothel. Most of the mother does not care about the education of their girls; their only concern is to make them prostitute to earn money.

SMS have  taken initiatives to admit the children in mainstreaming schools (Primary  and High Schools). A total of 50 children are  enrolled in the schools from (I – X) grades who are living in a shelter home of SMS.. SMS wants to ensure all children from brothels to have their mainstreaming educational rights.

We need your financial support to run their education