In 1996, the Supreme Court of India passed a historic judgement completely banning the cutting of trees in the seven north-eastern states of the country. While the move was welcomed by environmentalists, it spelled doom for hundreds of women artisans in the area who depended on\u00a0access to bamboo and cane for their work.<\/p>\n
Thus began the process of mass migration of rural communities to urban areas in search of employment opportunities. This, coupled with\u00a0the conflict situation in the Northeast around that time, led to several women and children becoming victims of human trafficking.<\/p>\n
Now in 1993,\u00a0Impulse NGO Network (INGON) was founded by Hasina Kharbhih from Shillong\u00a0as a rural livelihood initiative for women artisans in the East Khasi Hills District of Meghalaya. But after the Supreme Court order in 1996, the focus of her organisation began to shift to battle\u00a0the scourge of human trafficking in the Northeast.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn February 11, 1999, we restructured the organisation and re-registered it into a professional organisation as Impulse NGO Network (INGON) under the Meghalaya Societies Registration Act (1983) and pursued the issue of addressing human trafficking more doggedly, researching and documenting the facts we discovered,\u201d says Hasina.<\/p>\n
Since then, INGON\u00a0has saved approximately 72,442 people and empowered over 30,000 women artisans.<\/p>\n