01:01:38
Google Video
siddamma.wmv
siddamma.wmv
In 1993 as a young sociologist and educator for slum children, Kari Siddamma was exposed to the plight of the slum women who were suffering inequality, oppression and extortion. She stood up for their rights, and founded the Bharathi Trust, and worked extensively with the marginalized Irula (a low caste) tribal communities in Tamil Nadu, India. The Trust designed a holistic program to address bonded labor including awareness camps, advocacy, day-care services and mainstreamed children into the educational system by through motivational educational centers. It also helped with several income-generation schemes and organized the communities into cooperatives, and helped them secure government land using existing laws in the Indian constitution. Siddamma�s intervention brought the plight of bonded laborers to the Parliament which led to the laborers being ultimately released and rehabilitated. In 2004, Siddamma helped release over 1,000 bonded laborers employed in the rice mills of the Red Hills area of Tamil Nadu. In Tamil Nadu, this was the first time a tribal group had asserted itself in such a way. The trust is now a people's movement covering over 50,000 people in four districts of Tamil Nadu and is now better organized to pursue indigenous legal rights from exploitive landlords. Recently she was mentioned among "Heros Acting To End Modern-Day Slavery" by the US Department of State in its Trafficking in Persons Report 2006
Google Video | September 23, 2007
