In development spaces, survivors are often welcomed as storytellers, but rarely trusted as decision-makers. Yet the girls I grew up with are not stories waiting to be told. They are leaders waiting to be trusted. Funding the leadership of survivors allows them not only to tell their own stories, but to make impact and write new stories for themselves and others.

I was born and raised in a brothel in Mumbai. Today I am poised to speak at the United Nations about girls like the ones I grew up with, and discuss the importance of funding the leadership of survivors.

This week I am in New York attending the Commission on the Status of Women, where I will speak on a panel titled “Hidden and Normalized Inequality and Violence: The Realities of Women from Communities Discriminated on Work and Descent.” The panel focuses on communities like mine, where gender discrimination is compounded by caste and occupation.

For years, people around the world have invited me to share my story — how a girl raised in one of India’s most stigmatized communities found her way to global stages. At 18, I became the first girl from a red-light area to study abroad after receiving a scholarship to Bard College in New York. At 19, I received the United Nations Youth Courage Award and was named one of one of the 25 women under 25 to watch by Newsweek magazine.

People often tell me my story is inspiring.

But the longer I spend in global development spaces, the more I notice a pattern. The system loves survivor stories. What it struggles with is survivor leadership.

I was born and raised in one of India’s oldest red-light areas, where the narrow lanes of brothels formed the backdrop of childhood. Girls learned early what the world expected of them — for many of us, the future had already been written.

At 16, I left the red-light area for the first time when I came to Kranti, a home and leadership school for girls from India’s red-light areas. Soon after, I found myself speaking to universities, conferences, and development organizations about my life. Again and again, I was asked to tell my story, to describe the trauma, the stigma, and the barriers girls face growing up in places like the one I came from. But never did anyone ask what solutions might look like if girls from those communities were the ones designing them.

Read the full article about funding the leadership of survivors by Shweta Katti at Devex.