survivor-made-bags
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The Aruna Project
The Aruna Project is a Cincinnati-based nonprofit athleisure brand that creates lifelong freedom for survivors of sex trafficking through employment supported by holistic care. Founded in 2014 by Ryan and April Berg after time spent in Mumbai's red-light districts, Aruna employs survivor artisans in India and the US to craft premium bags, totes, and hair accessories - with 100% of sales revenue reinvested into freeing, employing, and empowering women. Its 'Freedom Business' model reports an 86% sustained freedom rate versus a 23% industry standard, and its national Aruna Run 5K series mobilizes thousands of runners to 'Run for Her Freedom.'
Ryan Berg
Ryan Berg is the co-founder and CEO of The Aruna Project, a Cincinnati-based athleisure bag and accessories brand stitched entirely by survivors of sex trafficking. With his wife April, he built a hybrid model that fuses a for-profit fashion label with nonprofit holistic care - transitional housing, counseling, healthcare and a living wage - to create what he calls lifelong freedom. The work started after a single TV news brief about children rescued from a brothel sent him hunting for that brothel on a business trip to India, where he found a two-mile stretch holding an estimated 15,000 enslaved women. The Aruna Project says it has helped free and employ more than 160 women across India and the Tri-State and contributed to an 86% drop in trafficking in that part of India.