A CHARITY worker in York is set to teach self-defence to young victims of abuse and trafficking in India and Nepal.

Tamsin Earl, a mother of four daughters, has joined forces with a childhood friend to set up Storm – A Fighting Chance, a global initiative to teach combat skills to young girls and others at risk of abuse or violence.

Tamsin and her friend Dan Tswei, an experienced teacher of Krav Maga self-defence moves, have been invited to take their first training sessions to victims of sexual abuse in India and trafficking in Nepal, at the end of the month.

Together with Dan’s daughter, Ellie, 19, and Wayne A’lee, who are also instructors, they will be teaching self-defence skills which they say anyone can use to get away from attackers.

Dan said they will teach moves to help people against multiple attackers, such as in situations of attempted rape or abduction.

Krav Maga is described as “a simple tool kit” of moves which are taught in high pressure situations.

Pupils learn how to defend themselves and then attack, and even disarm, so they can get away.

Developed in the 1930s against Nazi attacks on Jewish people, it combines martial arts, boxing, wrestling and even moves from ballroom dancing. It was developed within the Israeli Defence Forces as a form of self-defence useful for all shapes, sizes and abilities.

Tamsin, who lives in Northallerton, works with young care-leavers in York, and has always been a strong supporter of anti-trafficking charities.

She says she and Dan decided they would make their idea a reality after she had a dream in which he and Ellie were in another country, training youngsters in self-defence.

They had not seen each other for 20 years but had recently re-connected so she phoned him and told him about her dream.

Dan, who teaches Krav Maga in Truro, Cornwall, near where he and Tamsin grew up, said: “That day I had the first reply to an email I had sent out 15 months before when I had offered to go and train some girls in Lucknow, India.

“That day, after 15 months, they said ‘yes please, we want you to train us’”, he said. “I couldn’t believe it, but I felt I must go.”

Tamsin’s role is to communicate with the people who have invited them, co-ordinate the visit and make all the travel arrangements.

“I have always been very anti-trafficking,”

she said. “But it seemed to me that work against trafficking was often like sending an ambulance to the bottom of a cliff instead of putting a fence around the top of it…no matter how much education people get, if they are grabbed that’s it, they’re gone.

For now the team have funded their first trip on their own.

Anyone who wants to help can donate at crowdfunder.co.uk/storm-a-fighting-chance-1