Empowering Romanians to Prevent Trafficking

At Uncaged, we aim to stop any type of success traffickers have by empowering Romanians to actively prevent trafficking!

How are we doing this? By actively blanketing society at every point, we are helping nationals understand how to identify, respond to, and avoid trafficking tactics.

We told you how we are training first responders, key members of society who have influence in their communities.

We aim to reach all levels of society–from school children to refugees crossing the border, and average community members to travelers in airports and train stations. Training the general public is a key part of our strategy to help identify victims and prevent people from being trapped and abused in the first place.

Our opportunities to raise awareness and train the general public are constantly growing. This year we’ve had the opportunity to train members of Romanian and Moldovan communities, church members, non-profit leaders, and school children.

We teach them how to recognize trafficking situations. We share how they can refer survivors of trafficking they identify in their communities to The Sanctuary and help bring them to safety!

Thanks to our local teams’ connections, we’ve been able to work with the government to gain access to public schools. We’ve been able to provide educational materials to school-aged children to keep this incredibly vulnerable population safe.

We are working on getting these materials to 250,000 children in Romania and preparing translations in other languages!

The doors to Europe are opening as we gain more and more allies in Romania and Beyond. Every person trained is another person added to The Freedom Highway— a network of hundreds of individuals, NGOs, and churches scattered across Europe who are doing the important work of rescuing traffic survivors, bringing them to safety, and helping them find their way to The Sanctuary.

You hold the key to preventing trafficking around the world!

Help us train more people and grow The Freedom Highway!

Prevention Starts with Training

For us, prevention means training. We are committed to training people at all levels of society. Training first responders is an essential part of blanketing nations with anti-trafficking knowledge.

These are the people who are in likely positions to encounter traffickers and their victims. These are people who have influence in their communities and can protect people with the knowledge they are gaining.

Who Are First Responders?

Think about the business leaders in your community. They have influence and connections. They have resources and staff. Imagine what could happen if business leaders learn about how traffickers are targeting members of their community and gain passion in fighting the evil of modern-day slavery! We are seeing this happen in Eastern Europe. Hear one incredible story about how a business leader gained the vision, had his staff trained by our team, and one survivor’s life has already been saved! Imagine the multiplication of this story to hundreds more business leaders and the impact that would make!

An important part of the anti-trafficking strategy is training travel personnel. Knowledgeable staff at airports and train stations can spot a dangerous situation and step in.

According to the International Air Transport Association, four billion passengers pass through 20,000 airports in the world every year. About 20% of all traffickers who pass through official border crossings travel by air. Many more travel by train. If staff in these places don’t know the signs of trafficking, these people can continue to hide in plain sight. We will not let that happen. We are training personnel in Romania and beyond!

The 2022 Trafficking in Persons report indicated that children represent more than a third of identified trafficking victims in Romania. We expect this number to be higher considering the Ukrainian refugees that have been entering the country over the past two years. Children are vulnerable and must know how to protect themselves.

This year we have entered partnerships with more public schools. We’ve been able to provide training for young children on how to identify safe people they can trust. With older children, we talk about the dangers of social media, the dangers of being trapped in dangerous situations, and the typical recruiting plans of traffickers.

We can’t teach this to every child and we can’t be there every day to protect them. But staff and teachers are there each day. They are the first line of defense for their students. Their knowledge of how to help students protect themselves is vital in keeping thousands of children safe!

Did you know that 80% of human trafficking that happens across international borders crosses through official border points such as lang border points and airports?

Border patrol and other workers at points of entry must know how to spot trafficking if we are going to stop this evil practice. When we train border workers we can not only stop victims from being moved across borders, traffickers can be caught! We have seen this happen over the past two years as we’ve trained border workers in Romania and Moldova. Traffickers sat at entry points waiting to target Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war. The anti-trafficking knowledge of these front-line responders has saved countless lives!

You hold the key to preventing trafficking around the world! Help us train more first responders!

Prevention Works: The Survivor at the Door

When we train people how to identify human trafficking victims, they become members of a powerful network that facilitates rescue and helps them become survivors! One person trained can mean more precious souls saved.

This powerful story is a reminder of why we are blanketing Europe with anti-trafficking training!

Our European Director had connected with the owner of a local ophthalmologist’s office last year. He was excited about the work and wanted to be a part of it. He asked for his staff to be trained so they could recognize traffickers in the community or in the clinic.

Just days after the staff had been trained, we got this call. Because of that training, a staff member knew what to do when Tamara arrived at his doorstep—battered, soaking wet, and terrified. His family was able to calm her down, ask questions about her situation, and recognize trafficking at work. They hid her until our team arrived to facilitate her rescue.

She was badly hurt. Our team took her to five different hospitals for all the treatments she needed. We got her to a safe place so she could begin to heal.

As her physical scars began to heal she also began to reengage with others. All Tamara could say in those first days after her rescue was how grateful she was to our team for all they were doing. "I don't know how I'm ever going to repay you," she would say. When she would say, "I don't deserve this," it would give us the opportunity to tell her how worthy and loved she is.

It's because of the support of donors who believe in this work that we are able to get involved in situations like this. We are seeing prevention and rescue spread farther every day because of the opportunity to build a Freedom Highway around Europe.

We are bringing girls like Tamara home because of you. Thank you!