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The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Fellows > Past Fellows and ... > Summer Interns 2006 > Jessica Sewall an...

Jessica Sewall and Women's Consortium of Nigeria

Jessica Sewall is an intern with AP's partner organization, WOCON.

 

Jessica has completed her first year as a graduate student at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute pursuing a Master’s in International Policy and Development and a Certificate in Humanitarian and Refugee Emergencies.  Prior to commencing her graduate degree she worked for the City of Milwaukee on an outreach campaign for work support benefits for low-income families.

 

She completed her undergraduate coursework at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, dividing her final year with a semester in Ecuador and a semester in Chile. In Ecuador she was a part of a team of ten students that conducted a needs assessment and census survey of a small village outside of Quito and worked with community leaders to acquire potable water, sanitation services, education, and the construction of a community hall.  She is currently focusing on gender and development and post-conflict reconstruction in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is writing her master’s thesis on the economics of human trafficking and the impact on development.

 

The Women’s Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON) was established in 1995 as a national NGO for the advocacy of human rights, specifically in the area of women, children, labor laws, and human trafficking.  This summer The Advocacy Project (AP) and WOCON are working together with another AP partner in Italy (TAMPEP) to combat human trafficking.

 

The main goals will be to open lines of communication between WOCON and TAMPEP to integrate work being done on the both the demand and supply side of human trafficking.  This will be done through information sharing between the organizations, preparation for a speaking tour with the directors of each organization in Washington, DC in the fall, and regular dissemination of information to the public for the promotion of education surrounding the issue of human trafficking via the internet and education awareness campaigns both in Nigeria and the United States.

 

Jessica will be focusing specifically on performing an assessment of WOCON in the areas of management, technical capacity, and operations in order to better assist WOCON in capacity building in the future.  She will also be updating WOCON’s website, training a staff member to continue updates and regularly post information, expanding visits to the website through linkages with partner NGO’s, and blogging on her experiences.

In addition, Jessica will be developing outreach materials, assisting in the research and surveying of safe houses in Benin City where victims of trafficking are deported to upon return to Nigeria, and implementing a project for awareness with a local university student group in Lagos.

• Jessica Sewall's blog

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