What Jacobstein is happy to talk about is Human trafficking. An event to highlight this was held today. After completing stakeholder training and public awareness efforts, the RET team successfully strengthened partnerships to increase public involvement in combating human trafficking. Shantel Neal attended and has this story.
Every year, thousands fall victim human trafficking, but - with US funding - a group named TLEAP has received funding to empower communities to combat the crime of human trafficking.
Local organizers, RET International in partnership with the US Embassy and other stakeholders hosted the project's closing ceremony. Joshua Munoz did monitoring and evaluation:
Joshua Munoz, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer RET International
"The project had an overall target of 540 persons in terms of the training and with data itself we broke it down to be 135 training of trainers so this is persons persons within the traffic department, port authority, aviators where we looked directors an those within these specific department and we train them and we provide them the skills one going over the module and two providing the skills to be an effective presenter to share where share back with other members within their team. The second part which was just the training itself which was just information sharing that was broken down into two segments, the first segment with the bus drivers and operators that was 270, the target was 270 and eventually the e-course which was in partnership with the University of Belize where the module would then be digitalized and at a self paced for 10-12 hours."
"One of the biggest challenge when implementing this project was how to get this information within the transportation industry more specifically the service providers since we know that those who in the taxis and bus drivers they are always on the go and we can't place everyone in room for like a day or so forth so what had to do was to condense the modules just enough ike the 4 elements to give a short presentation between 15-30 mins and to ensure we could pass on that information to them so that hey could understand how trafficking, how transportation itself is vulnerable to human trafficking."
Beyond the beaches and resorts, the sinister trade of sex tourism thrives and is a plague on many communities. A key part of the training was to highlight the law and penalties to deter perpetrators.
Cherese Ferguson, Country Director, RET International
"We are not able to do it 100% because we know they are vulnerable to being used or maybe some of them have been participating in facilitating trafficking. That is why it was important to target this population. so that they have the information and the key part of our training that we highlighted was the law, the Anti trafficking Prohibition Act which outlines the offenses and the penalties for those so if they are knowledgeable and culpable participating in this act they know what the consequences will be."
Belize City Mayor Bernard Wagner says that his municipality also sees human trafficking.
Bernard Wagner, Mayor Belize City
"Human trafficking is rampant not only in the northern and southern districts or western districts but also in Belize as you can see in the presentation it is widespread and so it was important for me to participate as a municipality to have the necessary training done as a municipality to have with our traffic officers, our enforcement officers to be able to pinpoint where there is, you might suspect human trafficking."
"It's a starting point you start and you build on it and the training manual is an ongoing training you'll never fully reach the point where you understand all the implications in respect to human trafficking so to be able to have this manual is the first step but to be able to have it spread across your entire municipality is the next step."
To equip stakeholders with the tools to train others, training manuals were distributed during the ceremony.
