The Safe Village Programme, aimed at building awareness against human trafficking among rural masses across 100 villages in Andhra Pradesh, was launched at Sabbavaram village in Visakhapatnam district by Joel Reifman, Consul General, U.S. Consulate General, Hyderabad, here on Tuesday.
The programme is sponsored by the U.S. Consulate General, Hyderabad, and is being managed by My Choices Foundation, an NGO.
The Safe Village Programme is a holistic programme aimed at sensitising at-risk community members about human trafficking, its causes, risk factors, creating awareness about ways to prevent trafficking, sustaining the awareness and conducting vulnerability-reduction workshops.
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To run this programme, Operation Red Alert, a division partner of My Choices Foundation, has partnered with local NGOs that work on issues of women and trafficking, and trains them on the Safe Village Programme, to act as official implementing partners.
As per an official release from the consulate, there are three stages in the programme: pre-visit, two days Safe Village Programme and the follow-up.
As part of pre-visit, volunteers visit the targeted villages and collect data to confirm the vulnerability and trafficking risk and get a deeper assessment of the issue.
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The volunteers then discuss the issue with authorities, including village sarpanch, and NGOs seeking their partnership in the programme. Other partners in this mission are school headmasters, anganwadi workers and ASHA workers.
After obtaining the consensus and assurance from stakeholders the Operation Red Alert designs the programme schedule for a particular village. During this intensive programme, volunteers speak about the signs of potential traffickers, potential vulnerable people and the strategies the traffickers adopt to lure innocent people.
Rakshak team
During this programme, a Rakshak team is formed so that they take initiative when villagers reach them with human trafficking complaints.
Addressing the volunteers Mr. Reifman said, “Our team at the Department of State and the U.S. Consulate in Hyderabad works with local civil society organisations and host governments through various programmes and campaigns to eradicate modern day slavery.”
Sudha Upadhyayula, Head of Operations, My Choices Foundation, said the programme will be conducted in 100 villages in Andhra Pradesh and these villages are being identified with the help from authorities and respective village heads after assessing the vulnerability to the problem.