Building a Partnership
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| Trafficked |
I first heard about the Sophie Hayes Foundation when I met
with Congresswoman Rosi Orozco during my time in Mexico City. After an in-depth
discussion about trafficking in Mexico – legislation, awareness, support etc.
she then turned the table by asking me if I knew about the trafficking
situation in the UK. I had to admit, I’d been so engrossed in ‘global
trafficking’ – the UN protocol, the UNODC and US department of state reports
and their impact on Mexico, I’d completely overlooked the situation in my own
country. Rosi explained to me that Sophie was the first trafficking survivor in
the UK to have her story publicised through the media and fully told in her
book Trafficked, which Rosi gave me to read after our meeting. So this
is where it all began. Upon my return to the UK I completed my dissertation
then read Sophie’s book. Ashamed of being so unaware of the situation in the UK
I began expanding my research by looking into trafficking in the UK and the
action that was being taken (probably mostly as a form of ‘productive
procrastination’ to avoid any more dissertation writing).
I got in touch with the Sophie Hayes Foundation who failed
to reply to me for the next three months (I now understand that this is because
the organisation is completely volunteer-led and resources/capacity are
therefore limited, something I tried to rectify during my internship). However,
after three long months of unemployment, temp work and looking into UK
trafficking organisations and internships I eventually got an invite to their
Volunteer Day.
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| SHF exhibition. Survivor voices. |
Unsure of what to expect I headed to the Day and learnt what
the organisation was about, being reminded of Sophie’s Story and the importance
of the Survivor Voice, which is so often ignored. Then and there I pitched
myself. I told them that I was looking for an internship and how I had come to
find them and voila! They welcomed the idea of full time assistance and as I
was talking to Adam (the Research branch lead) he knew he could put me straight
to work on completing the research report on aftercare that had been in the
works for far too long.
Skipping forward a few months, as I have already discussed I
knew after going to Mexico and meeting so many incredible people that I needed
to return and get more involved in work directly in the combat of trafficking.
Knowing Sophie’s connection with Mexico and linking it with my passion to
return we decided that establishing an international partnership was the
obvious way forward. We decided that El Pozo de Vida was the perfect
combination: survivor-focused and extending over wider projects where the needs
of the country lie and where their capacity and strengths can meet these needs.
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| Notting Hill Carnival - embracing different cultures. |
How the partnership is going to look is still being work out
but it will mostly exist as a means to learn from one another and to adapt on a
local and global scale. By offering a platform for survivor voices and
combining our skills across the organisations we will be create a joined-up
approach to combatting trafficking. This partnership will be explore in the
run-up to Mexico and during my time there, presenting how it begins and evolves
with the hope of giving guidance to other organisations and eventually
establishing a greater international network of partnerships to combat
trafficking.
flickelsewhere
