EUROPE PREVENTION

ESCAPE MAGAZINE
With a focus on the trafficking of European youth, Love146 began a prevention magazine with partners in Moldova. This eastern European country has long been considered the ‘hub’ of trafficking in the region, both as a supply country and as a transit country for the movement of people from other countries.

Escape Magazine seeks to address the factors contributing to the vulnerability of young people. This is in direct response to the most common statement of survivors: '[I] did not know such a thing could happen.' In order to effectively impact the community, 60% of each edition contains popular culture articles you would expect to find in western youth magazines and 40% of the articles cover life and personal development issues, particularly the trafficking of youth and issues that underpin why Eastern Europeans are vulnerable to trafficking. These subjects include domestic violence, gender inequality, and pressing issues such as sexual health and HIV. A new edition of Escape is produced every two months in order to keep pace with the changing strategies of traffickers and to continue exposing their methods to at-risk youth.

In its first year of production, Escape educated a readership of more than 100,000 of Moldova’s most vulnerable young people. Love146 desires to see this dynamic tool continue as a constant for a three year period to significantly impact youth culture, to see them making safe and well informed choices as young people. It is important to understand that in a very short time, these young people will become the next generation of parents, carrying this understanding to their own children and being empowered to safeguard their own communities from Traffickers.

In early 2011, the prevention teams of Escape and Love146’s partner, Beginning of Life, were officially licensed by the Ministry of Education of Moldova to develop alternative educational programs within all high schools and trade schools in Moldova. Escape has been applauded by government agencies for informing youth about human trafficking and for the educational and cultural development nature of its content.

Escape is a resource which can easily be introduced to other countries in the region and a pilot edition has already been distributed in Ukraine in the modern slave port of Odessa.