Muktar is a teenage boy from the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is also an actor, producer, playwright, and director, and is one of a number of young people who have helped fight human trafficking in his community.

Muktar is a teenage boy from the slums of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is also an actor, producer, playwright, and director, and is one of a number of young people who have helped fight human trafficking in his community.

“When we started working with youth in 1998, we had no programs for teenage boys and girls. We started to wonder what sort of work we could do with the young people,” recalls Apurba Ghagra, Project Director for CRWRC’s partner SATHI.

SATHI staff decided to model what they were doing with adults in the community, and encouraged young people to meet together for times of mutual learning and support. They also decided to use these youth groups as a place to raise awareness about critical issues.

“In our country, only a small proportion of the population is literate. We thought about how people traditionally learned things. We realized that in our culture we have many different forms of theater. People love watching these spectacles, and we can convey very complex, difficult messages through this medium,” said Ghagra.

SATHI trained fifteen young people, including Muktar, on acting, directing, and producing plays for street theater. The young people then identified issues in their community and wrote plays based on situations that they saw around them.

The program has grown. SATHI has now trained 50 theater groups to hold awareness raising events using street theater. They have written and performed plays on citizenship, reducing the stigma of HIV & AIDS, and early marriage. They’ve also created a play about human trafficking.

Recently, CRWRC conducted a survey in the slums of Dhaka and found that many people had been made aware of the dangers of human trafficking and knew where to go for help. Respondents also reported that at least 16 potential kidnappings had been thwarted as a result of awareness raising efforts like those from the theater group.

“Lots of people come and watch and after watching the performances make a mark in their hearts and this is how they become very aware of the issues,” said Ghagra.

It has also had a life-changing impact on the young people involved. Muktar, for example, has been recognized for his acting and directing abilities. He now earns an income working with a variety of non-profit organizations to put on plays in Dhaka.