PROJECT
South Africa
South Africa has one of the largest economies in Africa, making it the main destination for human trafficking victims from southern Africa. There are also trafficking problems within the country; vulnerable rural people are trafficked into urban cities – Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, often via fraudulent job and education advertisements. Child labor is rife in industries including agriculture, mining, and market vending and family members in need of money are often complicit.
Our Mission
To empower ex-street children and those at risk of trafficking offering them hope and a different, better, future. To change societal attitudes to street children.
Our Challenges
In urban centers, child traffickers will force boys, refugees, orphans and children with disabilities to beg on the streets. Girls are most commonly trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation or domestic work. Sex trafficking victims are at risk of forced drug use as a means of control.
Mozambique’s poor, rural population are at high risk – children and young adults in particular are often trafficked to South Africa for forced labor in agriculture, street vending and commercial sexual exploitation. In farms and mines, men and boys from Mozambique will work without pay for months before traffickers turn victims to South African police for deportation as illegal migrants to avoid paying them, and the cycle begins again.
Our Impact
We partner with the organization Surfers Not Street Children who have been working on the rights of street children in South Africa and Mozambique for over 25 years. Our outreach program combines surfing lessons with mentorship, working to reshape the future of the most at-risk children. We empower ex-street children and children at risk of street connectedness (when children rely on street for their livelihood) through surfing and mentorship. The SNSC drop ins are safe spaces where children will learn important life skills. Through advocacy, we aim to change the societal view and treatment of street children.
Girls Surf Too launched in 2019 to address the particularly vulnerable girls living on the streets. And, we launched our English language program in 2019; the youth in Mozambique requested we teach English as it enables them to be more meaningfully engaged in the tourism industry.
Want to see the full picture of what your support makes possible?
95
Girls enrolled in girls surf too
37
Children were housed at our shelter
25
Young people received job training
868
Children are enrolled in our programming
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