New Light

About us

New Light offers comprehensive community development services and operates deep inside the red light community in Kalighat. The project provides the children of sex workers a safe haven, particularly in the evening hours when streets are the most dangerous and the mothers are working. Initiated by caring for 9 children in the year 2000, the programs of New Light today serves more than 250 children of various age groups. The services offered by New Light includes education, healthcare, nutritional support, recreational facility, HIV/AIDS care, income generation opportunities for the women and residential care for many of the young children from the community. Legal aid and advocacy against gender based violence and anti-trafficking are other thrust areas of New Light's operation.

New Light currently runs seven safe shelters in Kolkata. All of them are not situated in the same premises as the New Light safe shelter but all of them are New Light's property. Though it does take some time to travel from one shelter to the other, in order to volunteer, travelling is mandatory. Not only volunteers but all the staff members at New Light too have to distribute their time amongst all the shelters. All the volunteers are exposed to all the seven shelters run by New Light to get a better understanding of our project and then they are free to decide which area/shelter to work on guided by our operations team.