The Dressember Network: Freedom Centers and Child Advocacy Centers
Two minors on a bus in South Africa seemed to be avoiding eye contact and social interaction, and sticking close together rather than with the adults accompanying them. A young man noticed that they were speaking a foreign language and the adults with them, posing as their parents, spoke a different foreign language. The young man did not immediately think much of it, as situations like this are not uncommon in South Africa. However, when he heard one of the minors say that their mother was lost, indicating that the woman posing as their mother was in fact not who she purported to be, he was alarmed: if these two adults were not the children’s parents, who were they?
He called the A21 National Human Trafficking Hotline in South Africa. Even though the only information he was able to give was the bus’s route and license plate number, the hotline team was able to quickly reach the bus company and get more information on the bus route and contact details of the bus driver. Law enforcement was dispatched, stopped the bus along the route, investigated the situation, and, finding that this was in fact a case of human trafficking, took the suspects into custody. Then, A21 was able to partner with local law enforcement to provide support services for the children.
The Dressember Network has resourced development of Freedom Centers in Bulgaria, Greece, and South Africa. That means that Dressember advocacy and donations helped build the Freedom Center that severed the children on the bus in South Africa, complete with a 24/7 hotline dedicated exclusively to dealing with human trafficking calls like this one. Specialists fielded more than 10,000 calls with Freedom Center hotlines in 2018, allowing victims to access the help and resources that they needed more quickly.
The Dressember Network is Resourcing a Child Advocacy Center in Cambodia
Currently, the Dressember Network is resourcing a new Child Advocacy Center in Cambodia. A safe place of restoration and support is critical for a survivor’s journey of long-term freedom and reduces their vulnerability to revictimization. Freedom Centers provide survivors with holistic aftercare services, equipping them with the skills and resources required to achieve stability, restoration, independence, and integration into the community. Similarly, Child Advocacy Centers provide a range of services to meet the physical, emotional, educational, social, and mental needs of child survivors that have experienced exploitation.
Poverty in border cities and surrounding areas in Cambodia has made people living there, particularly children, more vulnerable to human trafficking, especially across the border to Thailand. The primary goal of the Child Advocacy Center in Cambodia is to identify victims and remove them from exploitation by giving them a safe, child-focused environment. At Child Advocacy Centers, children are interviewed by forensically-trained interviewers experienced in working with children who have experienced trauma and exploitation. Then, children are offered a range of services to meet their aftercare needs holistically. These services include things like dental and medical care, education sponsorship, safe housing sponsorship, psychological services, and even small business sponsorship.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for a Child Advocacy Center in Cambodia has become more obvious. The lack of financial security felt by those no longer able to work in Thailand means that many people are more willing to take on risk to support their family, which renders people more vulnerable to labor and sex trafficking. Now more than ever, it is critical that there be adequate support for survivors.
With the resourcing of the Child Advocacy Center, the Dressember Network is creating an environment in which we can fight human trafficking in Cambodia. The hope is that, by making these types of resources available, we are not only ensuring that more situations like the one in which the young man was able to ensure that two children were no longer exploited in South Africa occur, but also that the children who are able to access escape pathways have somewhere safe and empowering to turn. While it is a victory in itself to free children from exploitation, the clearest victory is empowering children to live the lives they want by enabling exit pathways for trafficking victims and then providing them with the resources and tools they need to pursue their goals.
The Dressember Network is made up of 20 organizations that support programs in the following impact areas: advocacy, prevention, intervention, and survivor empowerment. The Dressember Network partners with A21 to develop Freedom and Child Advocacy Centers around the world that help to empower survivors through aftercare. A21 is a non-profit organization driven by the radical hope that the cycle of human trafficking can be broken. A21 works to abolish human trafficking through awareness, intervention, and aftercare. When you support Dressember, you help dismantle trafficking holistically and in a way that prioritizes survivor needs and voices. Ready to join us? Register to become an advocate or make a donation today.
About the Author
Miranda Cecil is a second-year at Northeastern University School of Law. She graduated from the University of North Carolina in 2020 (go heels!) and shipped up to Boston. As a North Carolina transplant in New England, she loves exploring her new area on the weekends. In her free time, she enjoys cross-stitching, cycling, and reading. She hopes to use her legal degree and a passion for urban development to continue advocating for human trafficking survivors (and, despite the Boston winter, looks forward to the style challenge this December).