Our main target group for this programme is looked after young people, however we can also provide workshops for the following:

•       Community groups
•       Youth groups
•       Sports clubs
•       After-school clubs
•       Youth justice centres

We can also work with schools; however, given the multi-week nature of this programme it may be difficult to accommodate, as we know school settings are very busy! If your school is interested in the project, by all means get in touch for a chat. We’d love to hear from you and discuss ideas for how we could deliver workshops in your school.

Alternatively, victims can be misled through false job adverts, which promise work in hospitality or customer service. When the victim accepts the job, they are then forced into sex work, often after having travelled and given their identity documents to their trafficker.   

Victims of sexual exploitation may not realise that they are being abused, as they have been groomed by their perpetrator into believing the abuse is normal. They are not free to choose, as their compliance is enforced through bribery, trickery, or threats.   The misconception is that only women and children are trafficked for sexual exploitation, but men are targeted as well.

The Journey to Empowerment programme is currently running in the following trust areas:

•       Armagh, Banbridge & Craigavon
•       Belfast
•       Fermanagh & Omagh
•       Lisburn & Castlereagh
•       Newry, Mourne & Down
•       North Down & Ards

If your group is not in the above areas, but you are interested in the programme, we’d still love to hear from you! We are hoping to run workshops in other areas at a later stage, so we will keep your details on file and get in touch when we can offer the programme to you.

Human trafficking is a complex issue, with many facets and features. With that in mind, we have broken our programme into a set of accessible workshops with a weekly theme. We cover content such as:

•       Healthy relationships
•       Online exploitation
•       Forced criminality
•       Dynamics of human trafficking
•       And more!

If you are interested in booking for the programme, but aren’t sure of the content, we can provide a brief overview.

We know that human trafficking is a difficult subject to tackle, but our staff and volunteers are experts on the topic, and the development team have worked hard to make the content digestible and age-appropriate, without losing sight of the seriousness of the issues at hand.

Human trafficking and exploitation are ever-present in Northern Ireland, though much of it takes place in secret, with victims finding it difficult to escape their traffickers or seek help. We want to raise awareness of these issues, and support children and young people to be safe.

We want to “future-proof” our young people, to build resilience, educate and inform them. We believe that education is key to prevention, and we want to support young people to help themselves and their peers.

We want to arm young people with a greater understanding of how trafficking works, and how they can use their knowledge to be empowered. By engaging in the Journey to Empowerment programme, participants will have an ability to recognise dangerous situations and deploy the coping tools that we will have developed with them to protect themselves, and to ask for help from trusted adults who can protect them as well.

Our ultimate aim is to eradicate human trafficking in Northern Ireland, and we believe empowering and educating our young people is a key part of this goal. Keeping children and young people safe and informed is our best way of ensuring that trafficking will have no place in our future society.