A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

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

Pressure of Poverty

Poverty is rife in areas like Edo State after years of economic sanctions and military rule. This is exploited by the traffickers. A young prostitute can earn more in six months of working the streets in Italy than she would make in ten years from toiling on a farm in Nigeria-and with much less effort.

"Most (Nigerians) can barely afford one meal a day," says Sister Cecilia, from the Catholic order of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The order has taken upon itself to care for young women like Berta and Sonia who escape from traffickers in Benin City.

Learning to weave at the Uzomi compound.

The order has also established a training center for young women in the town of Uzomi, two hours from Benin. Here about 30 women weave cloth, make clothes, and bake bread, under the supervision of nuns. The workers are all chosen from poor families in the area and can earn up to an average of 5,000 Naira ($50) a month.

Seventy women have passed through the compound since it opened in 1984 and have gone on to open their own small businesses. Most of the food and material they produce is used by the nuns or sent to local schools, and the compound makes a profit of 150,000 Naira ($1,500) a year, which is reinvested in the operation. It is one small way of addressing the poverty that lies at the heart of trafficking.