In this year’s Blue Heart Campaign, we in Good Shepherd Centre, took this opportunity to raise the awareness of our residents regarding the phenomenon of Human Trafficking.

The residents were divided into two groups.

Both groups started by viewing a video on human trafficking

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWoHgIoLCPg).

 After that, they said a prayer to send positive energy to this vulnerable group of victims.  One of our resident, a 23-year-old who worked here as a foreign domestic worker shared that she was unaware of such exploitation happening in the world and she was grateful to learn about it now. She could now educate her family back home.

In the first group, we had two young girls among our residents.  The activity was to anchor their learning using role-play of an attempted abduction of a child. Child abduction can happen anywhere, any time and any place in the world. The reason for such role play is to facilitate and educate how a child could protect herself in cases when they were alone and in a risky situation.  This also allowed our residents from undeveloped countries to see that such a simple act is important to save lives and how the AMP (Action, Means and Purpose) model could be used in a child abduction scenario.  Our 5-year-old girl played the role of the child being abducted. After the activity, she shared that she learnt about the danger of trusting strangers especially when she is alone and mummy is not around.

In the second group, we had two teenage girls among the residents. So we used scam advertisements to show how human trafficking could be done through social media.  Here are some examples of how scam advertisements could be presented to them.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fhotforsecurity.bitdefender.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F11%2Falluring-fake-recruiters-entice-linkedin-users-with-attractive-job-offers-3-800×634.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fhotforsecurity.bitdefender.com%2Fblog%2Falluring-fake-recruiters-entice-linkedin-users-with-attractive-job-offers-7362.html&tbnid=wOKnWQnspG_LOM&vet=12ahUKEwjBzczd57rrAhXIBysKHeLuApYQMygBegUIARCqAQ..i&docid=8_ElshxrxlkNcM&w=800&h=634&q=Job%20scam%20advertisements&hl=en-US&ved=2ahUKEwjBzczd57rrAhXIBysKHeLuApYQMygBegUIARCqAQ (Cited July 2020)

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fixmypcfree.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F09%2Fonline-scam.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fixmypcfree.com%2Fblog%2F5-reasons-why-your-brain-is-the-most-powerful-internet-security-suite-ever-made%2F&tbnid=a5yK0iGMBcLEAM&vet=10CA0QxiAoAWoXChMI6Pex9ee66wIVAAAAAB0AAAAAEBA..i&docid=1V24Ykz22qH6aM&w=456&h=270&itg=1&q=Job%20scam%20advertisements&hl=en-US&ved=0CA0QxiAoAWoXChMI6Pex9ee66wIVAAAAAB0AAAAAEBA (cited July 2020)

One 20-year-old Foreign Domestic Worker resident reacted to one of the advertisements titled “Make $373 a day”. She excitedly asked how she could apply for this job. Ms Brenda, our facilitator explained by using the AMP model that such advertisement is a gimmick to trick people to fall into the trap of being exploited by the human traffickers.  Two of our teenagers ages 11 and 15 shared their observations that the advertisement titled “Real Translator Jobs” seemed legit as the website is professionally done.  But they were aware that money could not come by so easily.

After the end of both sessions, both  adults  and children residents then wrote down their prayers and well wishes on cut out figures for those who were and are victims of human trafficking.  These cut out figures were placed onto our mother earth to remind us to come together to pray for the vulnerable and victims of Human Trafficking.

Article by Ms Brenda Lee

Social Service Assistant

Good Shepherd Centre

Singapore