Provide Shelter for Victims of Human Trafficking

Dear donors,

A big thank you to you all for your open handedness that has been greatly supporting our efforts to fight child trafficking. Your generous donations have seen us assist 29 child victims of human trafficcking within this 3 months reporting period. Our main aim of establishing the shelter was to exclusively offer care and protection services to girl child victims of human trafficking between the ages of 6 to 18, but we found ourselves in certain unavoidable circumstances where we had to extend our services to 3 babies under 5 years; all of whom are boys. It is worth noting that human trafficking remains a huge problem globally.  

Rehabilitation services provided for the girls at the shelter include; basic needs, psychosocial support, medical aid, legal aid, educational support, home tracing, reintegration, economic empowerment and follow up. Those were our areas of focus during this reporting period.

April holiday saw the school going beneficiaries reporting back to the shelter from school which consequently raised the number of shelter residents. This led to adjusting of the shelter daily activity schedule to suit their holiday needs. The girls were prepared to go back to school towards the end of April. All of them were facilitated with shopping, transport, school fees and school levies.

HIGHLIGHTS

• HAART Kenya joined other stakeholders in the field of child protection in planning and celebrations of The Day of the African Child.  Our shelter was awarded certificate of recognition for the invaluable role it plays in combating child trafficking and reintergration of victims.
• 2 victims were enrolled in school both 6 years old
• 2 reintergrations and 1 repartriation were conducted.
• 6 victims were rescued and admitted to the shelter
• 15 beneficiaries received educational support
• 12 court cases are ongoing.The legal officer at HAART attennded the court hearings and court mentions.
• 29 victims were offered shelter.
• Skills training activities in handcrafts, computer and garment making were conducted by outsourced tutors. The girls made beautiful crafts and dresses.
• April holiday was full of activities from picking the girls from the various educational institutions, preparing them to go back to school by facilitating their shopping, transport, school fees and school levies.
• Easter celebrations. Shelter staff members and victims together enjoyed special meals. The girls were bought for gifts.
• 2 tutors- one for the the victims in Primary school and 1 for the victims in secondary school were outsourced during April holiday to offer academic guidance to the school-going victims. This was in an effort to boost their academic grades. Trauma has cognitive and academic impacts which from our assessment we realized some beneficiaries' performance were below average which called for urgent support.
• We managed to procure reusable sanitary towels from our partner organization. Each reintergrated victim will be offered a package that contains a dozen of panties and 6 reusable sanitary pads with a manual to extend our care even after reintergration. 3 girls have so far benefited. A training on how to use the pads was conducted.
• All the 29 beneficiaries benefited from medical support. There was mumps outbreak at the shelter which forced all the staff members and beneficiaries to receive Measle Mumps and Rubella vaccine. 2 physiscally disabled victims have been on ongoing physiotherpay services. This was expensive because the vaccine was not available in the public hospitals we visited and therefore we had to get it from a private facility.
• Psycho-social support was offered on a needs basis.
• Shelter staff members attended one day security training together with the rest of the HAART team.
• Shelter collaborated with HAART's Awareness department during tone of their events to showcase and sell products made by the survivors at the shelter. A policy was drafted to guide the process. We managed to sell products worth 91 dollars and distributed among the girls who made the products. This boosted their morale in the activity as they saw its financial benefits.

Our goals for the coming months are to:

• Identification
• Rescue
• Rehabilitation
• Home tracing
• Reintegration/ repartriation
• Economic empowerment

We look forward to your continued support.

• CERTIFICATE_OF_RECOGNITION.pdf (PDF)