Workshop for prevention of trafficking and sexual exploitation for children from social institutions

A large number of children in Bulgaria, with either no parents or parents who have abandoned them, are placed in state residential homes (social institutions). Around 30% of these children do not have any contact with their families and do not leave the institution before they become adults.

Thus those children form a large vulnerable group and are exposed at the risk of getting into slavery-like practices as a result of limited chances for proper socialization and professional realization. Children are very sensitive to people coming from outside and they trust mainly their close friends, roommates and children with similar experience and age. Therefore prevention programs run by peers are mostly efficient.

The workshop, which took place within the Prevention of Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children Project, implemented by the Gender Education, Research and Technologies Foundation, aimed at training peer educators who would further run preventive programs against sexual exploitation and trafficking in children, and at raising the awareness and capacity of children from specific vulnerable groups to protect themselves from violence, trafficking and sexual and other kind of exploitation.

For more information:

 Gender Education, Research and Technologies Foundation
 Prevention of trafficking and sexual exploitation of children

Photos: Maria Dimitrova.