The RESILAND initiative aims at implementing a 24-month process to reinforce participation, capacities and resilience of Children on the Move as key dimensions for their effective protection from trafficking and exploitation.
The project will develop its action through the following interlinked set of activities:
1) Empowering Children on the Move who are at risk of trafficking and exploitation, implemented in 4 countries and based on a participatory methodology including 12 focus groups with children and 12 consultations with social workers, in order to put in place a process to reinforce:
- Children on the Move’s participation, to fully express their views and opinions, be adequately informed and exercise their rights;
- Children on the Move’s capacities, to interact with the environment, detect and understand potential risks and prevent exploitation.
- Children on the Move’s resilience, to positively react to potential vulnerable situations by building positive future plans and perspectives.
This participatory process, carried out in connection with the associated reception facilities, will develop a set of flexible multi-language tools-a“safety map” compiled by and for Children on the Move and an interactive customized web-site for the provision/exchange of information and support-and will lead to a replicable model to be promoted at national and EU level.
2) Capacity building aimed at improving professionals and protection services’ effectiveness and efficacy by considering Children on the Move ’s resilience as a key element of their preventive/protective actions. It will be achieved by performing two sessions (IT - GR) of a EU Specialized Training, for trainers and professionals (4 days, 30 people in each country), particularly focused on how to reinforce children’s resilience. A proposal of standards will be elaborated during the training sessions to enhance policies and practices at national and EU level. A dedicated web-section containing documents, videos and podcasts of the sessions will be set up.
3) Advocacy and dissemination, based on the experience and evidence obtained, through the organization of a transnational seminar in Brussels, involving a group of 20 experts from 10 EU countries for the discussion and finalization of the proposed set of standards. The tool will be presented to the EU institutions in Brussels and widely disseminated.
The main expected results include: - The setting up of a process aimed at defining a model with COM to reinforce their participation, capacities and resilience to prevent the risks of exploitation and trafficking;
- The qualification and strengthening of the competences of professionals likely to come into contact with particularly vulnerable categories of COM in order to value COM’s participation and coping capacities as key elements for an effective protection;
- The identification of a set of standards to enhance participation, capacities and resilience of COM in national and EU prevention/protection measures against child trafficking and exploitation;
- The dissemination and sharing of the project’s results. The dissemination of the results will be ensured not only by the dedicated activities and tools, but also by the adoption of a participatory process and of a "training of trainers" model for the empowerment and capacity building activities, the involvement/support of an international Advisory Group of experts, the International Social Service and of the partners’ networks at national and EU level.
The initiative is based on an innovative human rights-based approach that put children and their histories at the centre and that moves from their participation and coping resources to identify effective protection measures.
Basing on an innovative, multi-disciplinary, trans-cultural and multi-levelled methodology and on the consolidated expertise of the partnership, the initiative will strongly contribute to the EU debate on prevention of/protection from child trafficking and exploitation as well as to the enhancement of EU standards and strategies in the field.