When I was growing up my mum worked from home repairing clocks, my dad was a postman. If you asked me what I wanted to do before the age of 15,which heralded rebellion for me, I would have said ‘mend clocks’. My parent didn’t smoke, I grew up a non-smoker. My parents have always voted Labour, as I have always done. So I can see how my parents beliefs and role-modelling had a huge part in how I developed from a child through to a woman to a mother.

But… What if I had been born in Bangladesh? What if my mother was one of the many mothers who have no choice but to become sex-workers? How would that have effected the outcome of my life? Inevitably without community support the chances are that I would have followed in her footsteps. That is happening to mothers and daughters right now, as I am writing this, as you are reading this.

ActionAid provides five homes, Happy Homes,which are specifically for girls to be kept off the streets. Off the dangerous streets. Girls and young women who have amazing potential but due to their life circumstances - circumstances of which they have no control over – do not have options and choices that most of take for granted on a daily basis.