Angel on Earth | Woman of India | Creator of Choices
Elca has a background in finance and investment banking. She holds a CFA and MBA. She has always had a heart for the plight of women and children and whilst completing her MBA in Sydney in 2006 she realised that she would never be able to go back to a ‘normal’ corporate job.
In 2011 Elca Grobler and her husband, Roger, took a leap of faith and moved to India with their three young children. Soon after, My Choices Foundation was born and there was no looking back. My Choices Foundation, a Hyderabad based NGO, aims to give women and girls the choice to live lives free from violence, abuse and exploitation. One-third of all women in India have experienced domestic violence, 70% of all slaves globally are women, 90% of these are forced into sexual slavery and a staggering 40% of these are children.
Through Operation PeaceMaker, they have reached over 78,400 women with rights-education and impacted over 8,800 families with counselling and legal assistance.
Operation Red Alert has reached more than 2,388,000 people with anti-trafficking awareness, education, and training in over 4,200 villages across India. My Choices Foundation is committed to using the most innovative methods to end domestic violence and prevent sex trafficking in India.
Elca volunteers all her time and energy to My Choices Foundation and is also one of the primary funders.
“We aim to see the transformation of India into a safe, peaceful, and encouraging place for women and girls by empowering women and girls with the awareness, education, and support they need to become their own change agents.” – Elca Grobler
Connect with Elca & My Choices Foundation on Social Media:
@mychoicesfoundation on Instagram
ELCA speaks to Strongest Story on navigating through grief, walking through the fire & why ‘uncomfortable’ is necessary…
In the work that I do, the stories of the women that we meet are some of the most heartbreaking stories that you will ever hear. The stories of violence, abuse and the horrendous injustice that these women and girls face is harrowing. Their stories will cause the bones in your body to ache. Our human minds & souls were not created to deal with so much pain and sorrow and the evil darkness that this world holds. It produces true grief in one's soul.
It is in this sorrow that lies one of the greatest challenges that I have had to learn to navigate. Navigating the sorrow and realising that although you feel the sorrow, the pain and the immense GRIEF, this is not a sign of weakness or failure or of not overcoming, but a sign of true strength. The grief spurs an opportunity for growth and has strengthened me to build resilience.
The reality is also that there are some things you can only hear and feel when you get up close. Feeling this grief, and doing the work that we do, cannot be done from afar; you have to face the realities and the challenges that these women and girls face, you have to hear their stories to fight these adversities. So it is imminent that you will be incredibly uncomfortable. We have to be able and willing to do uncomfortable things and it is only then that the world changes.
“Half of the world’s population is being slowly killed off by the other half. How did we get to the point in our modern society where almost half of Indian women face domestic violence? In 2017, we still have close to 50 per cent of the girls in India who marry, marry as children. How did we get to the point where 50 million girls in India are missing? Killed as infants or fetuses. Why aren’t we, in 2017, at a point where we can break the cycle of violence against women?” - Elca Grobler
The above were words spoken in 2017 and although much has changed, the reality still exists and persists. In the face of the above, many have asked and wondered how I and my entire team overcome and build resilience when the problem seems so mammoth and nearly impossible?
Most of our overcoming and building true resilience is driven by the example of the women girls we serve everyday that are overcoming, despite everything stacked against them.
Some of these women are:
-The women in the communities themselves who will pull together and not give up. The women that face challenges that we will never comprehend and that are beaten and harmed by their partners and that still stand up to fight another day for their children.
-The guardian girls that phone on our Anti Trafficking National Helpline on behalf of a friend who is being forced into marriage, trying to save her.
-The Matron of our Safe Home. She was severely beaten by her husband and arrived at our sage home with the clothes on her and her 2 daughters. She has overcome and has been a true source of courage.
I love the quote that so perfectly illustrates how we feel about these nearly impossible situations: Everything is possible, the impossible just takes longer. We are constantly driven by what could be and should be:
A world without Gender based violence.
There is no finish line to cross, no perfect ending and no place of comfort. It is a race we are all in together and will have to travel on this journey hand in hand, men and women alongside each other, experiencing grief and using the grief to alleviate us to a place of strength - and out of this strength we build true resilience!
Ignorance will not help us create a world without Gender Based Violence. Ignorance only protects one group of people, the other group is the ones that are suffering, grieving, hurting, exploited - there is no more a time where anyone can claim ignorance on the war that is waged against women globally where 1/3 women have been harassed or sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Or where girls aged 12 are being trafficked for sexual slavery, beaten and raped up to 30 times per day.
Silence is the same as being complicit.
At My Choices Foundation - we know that we have to walk through the fire everyday without smelling like smoke when we come out on the other side. Although we will be uncomfortable and experience grief, we still have safe homes to go to. Most women and girls do not have that choice.
- Maya Angelou’s words speak so perfectly to the journey that we are on. “Thus we live through a major war. The question is, can we make it through minor peace. Together, we may be able to plan a less painful future. Separate, we can only anticipate further ruptures and deeper divide and loneliness..” We will not win this war by killing that which we hate, only by protecting that which we love. We have to function out of a place of love!
It is the courage of the women that we meet daily, the incredible strength of my team that work so tirelessly to fight these injustices that have stirred courage and resistance in the midst of enormous heartache.
I will again reiterate the words of a true mentor, Bryan Stevenson of the equal justice Initiative. "We have to be willing to do uncomfortable things, to do inconvenient things—that's when the world changes.” In this uncomfortableness we will face sorrow, but out of this sorrow a new strength is born and courage to persist!
A Personal Message from Strongest Story:
It is said that dynamite comes in small packages; Elca Grobler is most certainly testament to this truth. When I first met Elca, petite and blonde with eyes that sparkle with fountains of love, I remember thinking that she could have chosen any high-powered, high-paying career in finance, yet she chose a life striving to help the most downtrodden and desperate of women in every part of India.
When I reflect on my time with Elca in Hyderabad (a city in central India), it is with such a mixture of emotion. I loved every minute spent with her, but as I listened to her passionately explain the work of My Choices Foundation, I also felt sick to my core, and even moved to tears, as she related the horrific stories of what so many young women endure. Having lived on and off in India for over three years, I thought I knew a lot about this country I had come to love so dearly, but I realised I had no idea of the extent of its dark world of domestic violence and sex-trafficking. Once every 3 minutes in India a girl is sex-trafficked, the average age being as young as 12 years old; and once trafficked, these girls can be raped up to 30 times a day!
My heart welled up with such a deep anger and sadness.
Elca took me, and my friend Heidi, around her offices and some of their Safe Houses. Here we met and talked with some of the incredible local women of the community who form Elca’s army of what she calls, ‘Peacemakers’ and ‘Dragon-Slayers’. We were blown away by the work My Choices is doing - from grassroots level in rural villages right up to huge countrywide campaigns and even helping build India’s first national help-line focussed on sex-trafficking.
Elca is a true warrior. Regardless of recognition and reward she’s totally dedicated to fight the battle to which God has called her. Her bravery and strength is remarkable yet her heart remains soft as an angel – surrounded by suffering, her eyes still often well with tears when she speaks. Elca, Strongest Story humbly salutes you for your courage and obedience to The Call. We stand side by side and arm in arm with you in this battle - our war cry is one with yours!