Support victims of human trafficking in Serbia

ASTRA runs a Day Center for children from Residential institutions, where we organize different workshops for them. A 14 year old girl came to one of the workshops that we organized, it was her first time here. When we spoke with children about the work we do and human trafficking issue and how to protect themselves, she rose a hand and in front of everyone said: “ I am a victim of human trafficking”.

Fearing how other children could react, we invited her to talk in private about her experience. She said she was in a residential institutions for several months now and that she does not have anyone to talk to, and that she feels that no one understands her, that everyone are rejecting her.

Then she told us her story; how she met a boy on Facebook, who was much older than she was, how he promised to help her, but then she was faced with a cruel reality.  All he ever wanted was to use her, he abused her, beat her, forced her to do hard work. She found out he was planning to sell her in Austria. Luckily, she managed to escape.

We spoke to her for a long time, and explained her that she was not alone, that we are there to help her. She started coming to Day Center regularly, participating in various workshops and after that we were helping her to improve her reading and writing skills, we helped her studying in order to improve her grades in school. Her education was something that has been neglected for a long time, since no one ever paid attention to that, nor did they tried to help her learn. We worked hard with her and our biggest motivation was in the fact that we saw the improvement very fast.

The biggest gift we could receive was a New Year’s card she gave us where she said how lucky she was for having us, and how grateful she was. Some sentences are still echoing in all of us, giving us motivation to persevere with our work: “You saved a girl’s life and you gave her a chance to realize her dreams. I often tell myself: “You are not alone, you have ASTRA”. I hope I will be able to repay you for all that you have done for me. Thank you endlessly!”