YCoP Links
Issue 100, January 19, 2012
YCoP: Youth Community of Practice
The Youth Community of Practice (YCoP) global listserv links professionals and practitioners at USAID and its partner organizations to effective youth development ideas, information and best practices to help:
*Design more effective, sustainable youth programs, and
*Better integrate youth participation in USAID development projects
In this Links: Youth and Human Trafficking. According to the United Nation’s International Labor Organization, an estimated 2.5 million people are victims of human trafficking, a phenomenon fuelled by poverty, unemployment, and widening gaps between the rich and poor. Whether forced into prostitution, begging, or debt bondage, the victims of human trafficking suffer grave impacts while the trafficking trade creates instability and insecurity in the communities of origin and destination.
Youth are among the most vulnerable to human trafficking, as they often face unemployment, feel trapped by a lack of resources, and are eager enough to improve their living situation to be easily duped by traffickers’ false promises. Youth, however, are also uniquely poised to be the front lines of preventing trafficking, using youth-led organizations and modern communication methods to spread the word about the risks and consequences of human trafficking.
In this issue of Links, we highlight projects addressing youth and human trafficking from all three angles: preventing youth from becoming victims through livelihoods training, providing vocational and psychosocial support to victims reintegrating into society, and using the youth voice to raise awareness of an often ignored epidemic in the international community.
Announcements:
Walk against Bride Trafficking
www.empowerpeople.webs.com
The local Indian NGO EMPOWER PEOPLE will be holding its first "Walk against Bride Trafficking" on January 30th. Beginning in Assam and ending in New Delhi, the organization wishes to raise awareness of human trafficking for the purpose of forced marriage. EMPOWER PEOPLE is reaching out to government organizations, NGOs, law enforcement, and international media to shed light on the trafficking of female youth into states such as Assam, Jharkhand, and Bihar in order to fill the female gender gap with forced brides. EMPOWER PEOPLE is especially calling on youth to attend the march or promote it within their communities to create social pressure to rightfully treat these marriages as cases of trafficking.
International Profiles of Trafficking Workshop: Patterns, Populations, and Policies
http://mctc.co.il/
The Agency for International Development Cooperation of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center, and the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv are co-organizing an International Workshop "Profiles of Trafficking: Patterns, Populations & Policies" , to be held in Haifa, Israel on May 14-24, 2012. The workshop is aimed at members of social welfare and human rights organizations, as well as crisis intervention programs and social support services in order to create a cross-border network to fight human trafficking in both the origin and destination countries. The workshop includes lectures and study visits; applications can be obtained at http://www.box.net/shared/lfj058lsad.
Projects and Initiatives:
Stop Girl Trafficking College Scholars—Nepal
http://www.himalayan-foundation.org/projects/girl-trafficking
The American Himalayan Foundation (AHF) is a US-based non-profit with a field office in Kathmandu, dedicated to partnering with local NGOs and CSOs to support communities in the Himalayan mountain range. AHF projects support schools, provide care for children and elders, and preserve sacred sites and local ecologies. The Stop Girl Trafficking (SGT) partnership has served 10,000 girls in Nepal through education, counseling, and mentoring; recently, SGT launched an additional programming element to serve the adolescent and young women SGT graduates by offering vocational training in teaching, health care, or business. With 372 young women currently enrolled, the College Scholars program ensures that the young women are not only less vulnerable to being sold into bondage, but supports them in becoming active members in their community, role models, and change agents.
The Youth Career Initiative Human Trafficking Awareness—Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam
www.youthcareerinitiative.org
The Youth Career Initiative (YCI) is a six-month education program providing youth aged 18-21 at risk for exploitation with life and work skills through job placements, training, and support. YCI programs take place within international hotels, where participating youth are placed in jobs and concurrently receive 750 hours of work and life skills training. YCI began instituting training for hotel staff, including human trafficking victims, in October 2011. The workshops, which are conducted with support from the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, raise awareness of human trafficking that takes place within the hospitality industry and provides support to YCI coordinators working with survivors of human trafficking. The pilot program launched in October involves a YCI program with 45 youth beneficiaries, 15 of whom are survivors of human trafficking. The program will eventually be expanded to include all 11 YCI countries spanning six continents.
Web 2.0 Campaign on Human Trafficking—Eastern Europe
http://www.youngdanubians.eu/about-ycdn/
The Young Citizens Danube Network is an international non-governmental non-profit youth organization aimed at young people in 14 countries in the Danube valley. YCDN is launching a web 2.0 campaign to prevent human trafficking through a peer-to-peer youth driven awareness campaign. The project will begin in February 2012 with plans to launch fully by July. Trafficking experts will work with six youth coordinators representing Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary to develop slogans, visual concepts, blogs, facebook pages, and other tools for implementing the web 2.0 awareness campaign for youth in their home countries.
Joint Programme of IOM and UNODC under UN.GIFT to Combat Human Trafficking—Rwanda
http://www.ungift.org/knowledgehub/en/programmes-database/summary-rwanda.html
Despite a rise in trafficking rates and significant vulnerability to trafficking among Rwandan youth due to limited livelihood alternatives and a high population of orphans and vulnerable children, a lack of research or documentation of trafficking in the area has made awareness-raising among youth difficult. Additionally, incomplete legislation and a lack of data has led to no recorded convictions of trafficking in Rwandan courts and a dearth of victim assistance programming. UN.GIFT's program is working to increase knowledge of human trafficking among governments, build capacity of law enforcement officials, establish victim supports systems, and educate vulnerable youth about human trafficking. The program began in October 2011 and is scheduled to run until April 2013.
Combating Exploitive Human Trafficking through Education and Civic Participation—Guinea
http://www.worlded.org/WEIInternet/projects/ListProjects.cfm?Select=Topic&ID=14&ShowProjects=Yes&ProjectStatus=Active#p3161
World Education’s Combating Exploitive Human Trafficking through Education and Civic Participation in Guinea (PROTÉGÉ) project prevents human trafficking among the youth of Guinea by strengthening education systems, including non-formal education, adult learning, and vocational training programs. PROTÉGÉ also conducts awareness campaigns at the community level to strengthen community response to trafficking. Supported by the United States Department of State, PROTÉGÉ works in two prefectures, Forecariah and Kindia.
Resources for Practitioners:
Toolkit of Good Practices to Counter Human Trafficking—Albania
http://www.caaht.com/Toolkit_Final_Sept09_English.pdf
The USAID-funded Albanian Initiative: Coordinated Action Against Human Trafficking (CAAHT) program, implemented by Creative Associates International in partnership with the Government of Albania between 2003 and 2009, built capacity of Albanian civil society and government to fight trafficking. Drawing on lessons learned cultivated during CAAHT working groups and conferences, this Toolkit is designed for anti-trafficking practitioners in the NGO, government, and CSO realms to learn from the successes and mistakes of Albania's social service and educational programming. Based on worked done by organizations such as the International Organization for Migration, UNICEF, Save the Children, and Terre des Hommes, the toolkit includes sections on awareness raising tools for formal and non-formal education programs, prevention through youth-focused vocational training and employment placement, counseling for vulnerable populations, and capacity building tools for youth-serving populations.
Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It (2007)
http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/resources/
Produced by the international non-profit Not For Sale, this book presents the stories of people, programs, and resources reaching out to the victims of human trafficking. Through interviews and narratives, the book highlights many programs specifically targeting vulnerable youth and youth already engaged in trafficking, including former child soldiers in Uganda, former sex trade victims in Cambodia, and agricultural indentured servants in South Asia.
Trafficking in Persons and Human Development: Towards a More Integrated Policy Response (2009)
http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/19234/1/HDRP_2009_51.pdf
Trafficking and development have traditionally been addressed in separate policy arenas, despite the overlap between lack of development and susceptibility to trafficking. This paper outlines a possible framework for a more evidence-based approach to understanding the linkages between trafficking, trafficking policy and human development. It also describes the positive effect greater coherence between trafficking policy and development policy could have on human development, using links between unemployment and trafficking vulnerability for youth, especially women. Annexes pull out references to human trafficking in existing PRSPs, many of which point to the impact of youth employment strengthening as effective against human trafficking.
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Mission of YCoP: The Youth Community of Practice provides a forum for professionals and practitioners at USAID and its partner organizations to gather, consolidate, archive, disseminate and exchange information, knowledge, ideas and best practices, particularly related to the incorporation of youth participation in USAID development projects. The Youth Community of Practice is an informal body of volunteer members, reached through a global list serve and Washington-based chapter. Both the list serve and DC chapter forums include USAID staff, youth practitioners outside of the Agency, and youth themselves. It is jointly sponsored by the office of education in the bureau of Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade (EGAT) at USAID and the Education Quality Improvement Program3 (EQUIP3), and implemented by the Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC).
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