Fighting against social evils of child trafficking
Don Bosco to Implement 2 New Programs
In order to fight against the widespread social evils of child trafficking and child prostitution in our country, Don Bosco Fambul, has decided to implement two new programs including “Break the Silence” and “Girls Shelter Plus”.
This was brought to the attention of the public at a well-attended press conference at the institution’s headquarter in Freetown.
“Break the silence is a nationwide campaign to sensitize Sierra Leoneans especially children and youths, boys and girls about the danger of human trafficking and child prostitution. Adult, youth and children are invited to report to Don Bosco child line -323-cases of child trafficking.
“Girls Shelter Plus” is a program that target underage girls living in a situation of prostitution in the streets of Freetown. Its offers free medical check-ups and treatment, lodging and feeding, psychosocial support and counseling, spiritual and moral help, family tracing and mediation, reunification and above all the possibility to get reinserted into the formal system of education, to do skills training or to get a soft loan in order to start small businesses.
The shelter was opened in July 2017 and 163 girls have been so far reunified with their families and are now attending school or skills training. Few of them have started their own businesses. At the moment, there are 25 girls in Girls Shelter Plus. Don Bosco mobile and a group of female social workers carryout street work, visiting the places where they live, work and sleep, explaining the dangers of the sexual trade and helping them to dream with higher aims in life especially about going back to their families returning to school and learning different skills.
There are no exact statistics about child prostitution in the world. As it is illicit to speak about numbers. According to ECPAT International, NGO fighting child prostitution and trafficking of children there are more than 223 million children, boys and girls who are exploited in the sexual trade around the world.
Reports from the UN shows that Argentina, Chile, Cuba and Sri Lanka are countries with the highest number of sexually exploited children. In Thailand 80,000 minors are oblige to prostitute themselves every day. In Indonesia, 20% exploited women in the sexual trade are children. USA and Canada are not free from these social evil and it is said that 100,000 children are involved in prostitution. It is thought that 1,000,000 children are forced into prostitution every year especially underage girls who enter into the sexual market.
By Samuel Thomas Bangura
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