DEVATOP Holds Experience-Sharing For Community Champions in Project States

The Community Champions for Devatop Centre for Africa Development, in its TALKAM Against the Trafficking In Persons (TATIP) project, participated in an experience-sharing forum in key project states in order to empower them to do more in the fight against human trafficking in the states.

DEVATOP Program Assistants facilitated the activity in their respective states. The forum had a reasonable number of participants, all of whom were Inaugurated Community Champions in the respective project states.

It began with a round of self-introduction by everyone present, after which the facilitators from DEVATOP gave a refresher on key learning areas on trafficking in persons, such as an overview of trafficking and its inherent dangers, the various forms of trafficking, its elements, and the role of Community Champions in aiding the identification, reporting and following up on TIP cases.

The state project assistants ensured that the TALKAM App and its interface were well explained to the community champions present and also made sure they were well acquainted with the reporting platform as it is a tool that would be used by them when reporting cases of trafficking in their communities.

At this forum, community champions had the opportunity to give briefings about the activities they have carried out and also state some of the challenges they had encountered in the course of their activities. Future activities were also discussed and agreed upon, with the respective dates for each activity scheduled.

The experience-sharing session in Delta State was relatively brief as compared to that of Sokoto State. In responding to issues raised at the forum, DEVATOP, through the Project assistants, assured the participants that the issues raised would be deliberated upon by the project team, as it concerns the coordination of the activities and provision of support materials for information dissemination and community sensitization.