Raising Awareness- EU Anti-Trafficking Day

In collaboration with IFES Serbia, Sloboda Nema Cenu, OPENS2019 and FIDCC, we organized a yearly event in Novi Sad focused on raising awareness about human trafficking and on training the participants to recognize and respond to instances of modern slavery around them. It was organized on the European Day Against Human Trafficking and social distancing as well as other safety measures were observed.

The main goal of the event was to educate young people as future professionals working in the support sector so that they are trained to adequately respond to the needs of victims.

The target audience was students of journalism, law, psychology, and medicine.

On a daily basis, about 160 people leave Serbia, and most of them are young. In their quest for a job and a better future, they set out towards a foreign country and, and very often, without adequate preparation and support, they come across dangerous situations and are at risk to becoming victims of trafficking. That is why it is important to work on their education, awareness of trafficking, and ways of protection.

On the other hand, oftentimes, professionals who work in the support sector, due to inexperience, lack of knowledge, prejudices, and other reasons, do not provide quality support to victims. Even further, they can be the ones causing additional harm to the victims (through secondary victimization, inadequate assistance, etc.). That is why it is very important to work with future professionals. Young people studying for or engaging in these support jobs, they need to be educated in a timely manner so that in the future when they come into contact with victims of trafficking they can adequately respond to their needs.

An additional benefit that came out at this conference was that education like this is very important for students and that this is the only way they have the opportunity to learn practical things that will mean something to them in the future.

The conference is recognized as high quality, both by the students themselves, and by their professors at their universities who award them extra credits for attending the conference.