Stella Posted by Gaz Kishere

Three years ago, a small group of friends were gathering on the South Coast of England to talk about human trafficking and what they could do to play a part in combatting it. A year later, Escape magazine was launched in the capital city of Moldova to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and heads of education. A Member of Parliament spoke on what a significant contribution the magazine would make. This is why I am a firm believer in the contribution small groups of people can make in addressing this issue.

If I take a step back and consider some of my personal motivations for getting involved, Stella Rotaru’s work comes immediately to mind.  Stella has worked for several years with the International Organisation for Migration in Moldova as their Repatriation Specialist. I originally learned of Stella by stumbling across an article about her work in the New Yorker. This article really did a job on me.  I was so incensed by the capacity of traffickers to deceive and the regularity with which they changed their strategy while we, as NGOs, sat in a consultation, thinking up a response that may take another year to deliver. I was desperate to see a resource in place that would keep step with traffickers and continue informing the countries’ young people about how they might be recruited.

I remember meeting our partners in Moldova for the first time and asking if they had heard of Stella.  I was pleased to hear that they knew her and would arrange a coffee meeting with her. I was so full of excitement in meeting her; the anticipation had built because I realised that in Stella I had a Heroine, someone to aspire to be like. Unlike many of today’s celebrities, I was going to meet and later get to know someone whose life and efforts were worthy of being celebrated. We abolitionists need role models just like everybody else.

Photograph by Bela Doka, www.newyorker.com         

 

Stella and the team at IOM have advised on content for Escape and continue to participate in its distribution. Stella shared these thoughts about the magazine:

“I remember the first time I was given a copy of Escape magazine. Although my work wasn't focused on youth prevention, I knew this was an area that needed attention. Everyday we are bombarded by content – from online advertisements to print ads in magazines. A major challenge we face in preventing human trafficking is cutting through that clutter, getting out our messages of hope. And what I noticed about Escape was that by combining pop–culture with social issues, this magazine had a real opportunity to reach the youth of Moldova. It's bringing much needed issues to light and opening avenues for the youth of Moldova to discuss topics from relationships to human trafficking. The youth are the future of Moldova and it's vital that they are reached in a way that is appealing to them. And by supporting the work of Love 146 in Moldova, you are supporting an organization that is working to empower Moldova's future leaders.”

I wanted to give you the opportunity to meet Stella and hear about the work of IOM in Moldova by watching this short film from Witness Al Jazeera. The film mentions government camps for at-risk youth to which the Escape Moldova team have been invited in order to distribute Escape magazine.  This enables the team to input trafficking prevention content into the camps nationally. We would value your help in increasing our circulation and capacity.  Please visit the Europe Prevention page and choosing your appropriate currency.

 

-Gaz Kishere
European Operations Director

Youth Advocates in Romania Posted by Gaz Kishere

Love146 worked with partners in Romania last month to train the country's first group of young activists as advocates against human trafficking.  40 young people attended the training session.  This was the beginning of a two month commitment to impact their own communities, institutions, and places of education as teams of advocates.

Much of the education on human trafficking in Romania has seemed to perpetuate a high dependency on organisations to impact communities.  Historically, this training has addressed young people who have been largely passive recipients of this information. This is something we wanted to change. We felt that through training young people as advocates in the context of human trafficking, we would quickly multiply those who are carrying the story and issues in the country and empower young people to be change-makers. Along with Open Your Eyes partners, we worked with local groups who will support the young people and monitor their delivery of the Open Your Eyes campaign in their community. This will lead towards certification of the young people as Youth Advocates.  Participants will implement awareness raising for a dedicated period using both the resources provided by the organizers and the knowledge gained during training events.
 

Local partners in the activities include the Police Inspectorate of Calarasi County - Department of Analysis and Crime Prevention, General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection Calarasi, and New Horizons Foundation.

From this first stage of training, we have seen seven teams in place in Calarasi. We are now making preparations for another region in the north of Romania for 30 girls. All the campaign partners are delighted to see people mobilised to fight injustice who will have a voice and play a role in exploitation-proofing their communities. It is critical that we encourage locals to reach their own people -- this is the only effective way to see a long term cultural shift so that places like Romania become increasingly toxic for traffickers.

To learn more about the Open Your Eyes campaign, visit www.deschideochii.org.

What does "Prevention" do? Posted by Gaz Kishere

It is a harsh reality of counter trafficking that prevention work is underfunded globally. Education lacks the emotive pull of more obvious intervention such as the rescue and restoration of young people trapped in commercial exploitation. It is said that prevention work is difficult to measure.  How do you know that it works? This is one of the reasons we have an external research body monitoring the impact of Escape Magazine on schools with children who are the most at risk of trafficking.

Causes need to evidence themselves somewhere, it is just the way that things are. For us at Love146 we have always said that we are not actually about causes and issues, we are very much about people.  Indeed, we are about that one person because that is where the rubber meets the road. It is of great importance for us when we know that just one person has been impacted and it is important that prevention can also be viewed in terms of the intervention it is making. Prevention continues to be the much needed fence at the top of the cliff stopping the next generation from falling off into the abyss which is commercial child exploitation.

Below is a letter received at the Escape office in Moldova in eastern Europe. The personal details have been changed to protect identity.

My name is Anna, and I am studying in 9th grade. I live only with my father but our relationship is very strained because of his frequent drunken feasts that are happening right here at home. I was compelled to hide away all my stuff, because otherwise he just sells it. Once, he came to me with a tempting offer - to travel abroad for work so I can earn some money and start my own life, he said. To work there it was not needed to know the language or job skills. I was close to agreeing to that. A week after his proposal, Natalia came to our school from a visiting team. She told us about the phenomenon of human trafficking and the dangers that beset young girls abroad. After a lecture she gifted us with nice Escape magazines. After reading Escape and hearing the advice of Natalia, I realized that my father’s proposal was a real trap. He continued to insist and even found people who could pay for everything. But I refused to go abroad. And I think this was the smartest decision in my life.

It is still difficult to live.

But I’m free.

Anna, 16 years old, High-school, Moldova

Update from Ukraine Posted by Gaz Kishere

<!--StartFragment-->

A few of us are in Ukraine right now to meet various partners to develop a prevention strategy for at risk youth and to explore the role our Escape magazine can play in this. Most of those we are meeting represent regional groups working with orphans -- the group at the top of the pile when it comes to targeting those most at risk for commercial sexual exploitation in this country.

We have come to Kiev now to meet with people at the tail end of a national conference on orphans. In many respects, this has been perfectly timed to catch care givers at their most heightened state of passion as practitioners working with children.  We have also heard from care givers when they are at their most raw, fully aware of what is not working, the desperation of the situation and the lack of resources at their disposal.

Officially there are 106,000 orphans in care facilities in the Ukraine.  This is the statistic we can say is a statement of fact, these are the relatively lucky ones who make it into care. There are an estimated 4 -500,000 children classed as orphans in this country, living life on the edge, excluded from family, love and support.

Let’s just focus on those in the best care provision available to them: 40% end up with alcohol and drug addiction, 40% in crime and prison, 10% end up committing suicide and just 10% make it through to some kind of viable employment and stable lifestyle, according to statistics shared at the Ukraine National Conference on Orphans. These statistics are staggering and it should come as no surprise that the majority of the girls find themselves coerced or forced into prostitution, many from an early age, many while they are still in the care of the homes.

One of the groups we are partnering with is Circle of Friends who are very involved in trying to intervene in this vicious cycle.  Circle of Friends really caught the value of sharing the beauty and the hope of the children in their care through their images. This was an opportunity to evaluate whether Escape magazine would make an impact and it was concluded that Escape offers them a glimpse of hope, of a wider world where the narrative is not set or limited. Escape magazine is a tool to contribute to their healing and wholeness, their sense of place in the world, and to make them aware of those who would seek to prey on them and further rob them of a future.

We are delighted to partner with such people, to work on behalf of such beautiful young people and, in any way we can, to cut this cycle of exclusion and marginalisation and to fend off those professional exploiters and ruthless opportunists who seek to profit from such vulnerability.

Escape magazine will launch fully in September 2011 in regional strategic contexts with the partnerships we are forming. We are looking to make a national impact as we work with others towards the 2012 European Soccer Championships to be held in Ukraine.<!--EndFragment-->

Happy Birthday, Love146 Europe! Posted by Gaz Kishere

Happy birthday, Love146 Europe! It has been one year since Love146 launched our European presence to a London gathering of old and new Love146 friends. What better way to celebrate than with a children’s party for grown ups? We celebrated with a spread of party treats on one side of the room and an art exhibition on the other side.  The art depicted child trafficking, highlighting the reality that childhood, as we experienced it, is a very different experience for others.

Love146 Europe Launch Celebration

We knew this was going to be an important first year as we built on existing work we had been doing with other groups in the UK.  We sought to identify what our contribution would be in European child slavery issues. ESCAPE magazine proved a great starting point to address issues of supply in Eastern Europe.  We distributed six editions to at risk youth in over 80 Schools in Moldova! Most recently, we distributed a pilot edition to youth in the modern day slave port of Odessa.  This Ukrainian city is the site from where so many begin their journeys into sexual exploitation.

When we discovered that there was an 80% increase in trafficking of Romanian girls to Greece and Austria, we took action. The increase resulted from targeted recruiting by traffickers. In the words of one of the victims identification teams, ‘One in every two new girls are Romanian, please do whatever you can to stop them coming as it is so terribly difficult to help them once they are here.’ Love146 spent the last eight months working with organisations and government agencies in mainland Europe to develop a national prevention campaign called “Open Your Eyes” or “Deschide Ochii” in Romanian. We are just about to launch a web site with stories, international help lines, multiple radio adverts as well as posters for schools and colleges that undermine bogus job adverts. Love146 partners will underpin this with localised impact teams working in the most targeted communities, identified through consultation with recent victims. It has been incredibly encouraging to work with others, to respond to fresh intelligence and to address an immediate issue with practical responses.

In June of last year, we decided as a UK team to spend 2011 identifying what our response might be to issues specific to England. We planned to pace ourselves and be very British about things. Little did we know that we were about to be drawn into the political arena with a visit to the Love146 Round Home of Peter Bone, a member of the UK government. According to Peter Bone MP (Co-chair of the All Party Coalition on Human Trafficking), recent research shows that there is still no specialised care for child victims.  Peter said, “In England an adult trafficking survivor (who has been found to have experienced the most horrific daily sexual abuse) is afforded a government supported safe haven where they are given therapeutic support towards recovery. I cannot imagine how terrible it has been for a child to experience the same abuse. It is a travesty of the highest order than no such care provision is afforded children in our country.

"Child victims of trafficking in the UK are currently placed in foster care and care homes where many go missing, presumably re-trafficked. In Solihull, for example, one child was in care placement for only an hour before his trafficker walked in and reclaimed his merchandise. In another instance, six children were rescued from Solihull Airport on route to forced prostitution in Canada. Within one year of their rescue, all but one child went missing from UK care.

Left to Right: Christian Elliott, Gaz Kishere and Steve Martin outside the Houses of Parliament

This is clearly unacceptable! In the presence of 12 MP’s, dignitaries and organisations in the Houses of Parliament, Love146 Europe launched a period of research towards better working practices and interagency collaboration on this matter. This is not an insurmountable problem; we are convinced that this is one gap in the system that can and will be resolved. At our March 2nd Parliament gathering , we also publicly launched our UK Prevention and Aftercare Fund. This fund enables us to continue focusing on UK issues as well as those in Europe. We also began development of a UK version of the prevention magazine, ESCAPE, for at risk youth in the UK care system. We plan to pilot this in communities where youth have recently been targeted for sexual exploitation by gangs.

I think you will agree that this has been an extraordinary first year -- one worth celebrating with a loud cheer. We celebrate, not to applaud the efforts of those involved with Love146 Europe, but because we have taken confident steps to protect even more children from exploitation and sex slavery.

<!--EndFragment--><!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment--><!--EndFragment-->