CELEBRATING 40 YEARS of SERVICE CAMPAIGN

Step Ahead was grateful to participate in the Asia Anti-Trafficking Conference, both by helping organize a panel of adults with lived experience of growing up in orphanages and by leading a workshop on Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) as an approach to preventing vulnerability and human trafficking.

The lived-experience panel gave participants an opportunity to hear directly from adults about how growing up in residential care shaped their lives. Panelists spoke honestly about some of the challenges they experienced, including the constant turnover of volunteers and visitors. While these relationships were often well-intentioned, people would come into their lives, form close connections, and then leave. Panelists reflected on how this pattern affected their understanding of relationships and contributed to short-term and sometimes unhealthy attachments. They also spoke about what happened to many of their peers after leaving care. A number dropped out of school and struggled to transition successfully into adulthood, leaving some even more vulnerable than they had been before entering residential care.

Their stories were an important reminder that protecting children is about much more than meeting their immediate physical needs—it is also about stable relationships, belonging, education, family, and preparing young people for adulthood.

Step Ahead also facilitated a workshop on Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) and its connection to trafficking prevention. We used the well-known challenge often attributed to Desmond Tutu: There comes a point when we need to stop simply pulling people out of the river and go upstream to find out why they are falling in. This provided a powerful way to talk about prevention. Trafficking rarely begins with a trafficker. It begins where hope meets hardship, and support is absent. Poverty, family crisis, lack of educational opportunities, unsafe environments, isolation, and weak support networks can all increase vulnerability long before exploitation occurs.

Through ABCD, we challenged participants to look differently at the communities where they work—not simply asking, “What problems does this community have?” but also, “What strengths, relationships, skills, organizations, and resources already exist here that can help keep children and families safe?” The workshop generated some great conversations. For many participants, thinking about community development itself as a strategy for preventing human trafficking was a new perspective. Rather than waiting until someone has been exploited and then trying to rescue them, we can also work “upstream”—strengthening families, connecting people to community resources, building supportive relationships, and addressing vulnerabilities before trafficking occurs.

The conference was a valuable opportunity for Step Ahead to contribute to a broader conversation about moving from rescue alone toward prevention—strengthening families and communities so that fewer children and adults become vulnerable to trafficking in the first place.