Economic Self-Sufficiency & Reintegration Project

Today we held our 2nd Quarter Stakeholders Meeting for the Economic Self-Sufficiency & Reintegration (ESSR) Project. Aside from being a mouthful, the ESSR Project is an ambitious one with so many pieces to the complex puzzle. Basically, the Project's aim is to get the young women we serve back into community life through meaningful preparation for training and employment. My role as the Aftercare Fellow since we launched the Project last year is to work on the development side of the Project - creating a framework or model for job-readiness and materials that the aftercare community can use to help prepar our girls for successful employment and reintegration outcomes. This means working closely with the local shelters in helping them prepare our girls for work. The business side of the Project is to mobilize the local business community here in Cebu to provide opportunities for training and employment. We've targeted eight industries, which include food industry, garments, hotel and tourism, facilities management, fashion accessories, business process outsourcing, and cosmetology. The range of involvement includes consultancy to on-site exposure visits to on-the-job training and employment opportunities. Our team has grown from just myself and our consultant, Laura, and now includes our Business Fellow, Matt, who has an MBA; Alan, who served as our Business Fellow for the last six months and is going back to the US for graduate school, and Amy, who graduated with her graduate degree in social work last year and will be here in Cebu to help us identify and assess our vocational training partners. These guys are incredibly sharp. I will miss working closely with the Project since my primarily responibility and focus is serving at My Refuge House (which I'm enjoy immensely too).

During the meeting today, I presented to the aftercare community stakeholders an update on the Project and a summary of my activities since January 2009. In the afternoon, we invited our business stakeholders and provided an overview of the project and explored ideas on how they could partner with us. Overall, an exciting day. Our Team worked hard and God has His hand all over this Project. He'll need to because as we have been told, nothing like this has been tried in IJM and other NGO circles worldwide. Here are a couple photos of the today's events.




The ESSR Team (minus a couple members) and our Field Office Director, Andrey! I'm glad there isn't a height requirement to be part of this Team.


One of my activities during the last few months was to faciltate monthly group think tank meetings. We invited stakeholders to tackle and ask some important questions and issues related to reintegration. We believed in collective intelligence, and as a result we are building a great body of knowledge about what it means to successfully return trafficking victims back into the community. The topics included how we should include family in reintegration; how to measure successful reintegration outcomes, how to motivate clients; and innovative transitional housing options for trafficking survivors. In this photo, I'm asking the group to come up with their dream housing project.


And here they are hard at work.

PS. This week involved late nights and I missed dinner with the family almost every night. I cannot overstate how Megumi has been supportive throughout. A couple nights ago, I arrived home late, and I received an early Fathers Day treat - homemade cards and baked chocolate chip cookies. Papa was so happy. Now I get to enjoy them for one full day before they leave for Japan.