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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

Students Join Forces With a Women's Club in Washington to Fight African Trafficking, May 15, 2007

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AdvocacyNet
News Bulletin 98, May 15, 2007
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Washington, DC: Two students from Washington, DC will use blogging this summer to help professional women in this city understand the grim realities of African trafficking.

The students, Leslie Ibeanusi and Michelle Lanspa, have been recruited by The Advocacy Project (AP) to serve as peace fellows in Turin, Italy, with the Transnational AIDS Prevention Among Migrant Prostitutes in Europe Project (TAMPEP), an organization that works to halt the trafficking of women from Africa to Europe.

Ms Ibeanusi and Ms Lanspa were recently invited to attend the annual gala of the Zonta Club of Washington, a women’s service organization. Members of the Zonta Club have offered to follow the students’ work through their blogs and help them to promote TAMPEP’s work in the US once they return to Washington.

AP has recruited 31 peace fellows to work with partners in 18 countries this summer, and all of the fellows are being encouraged to find community partners in the US like the Zonta Club.

Zonta International has 33,000 members in 68 countries and has supported projects in over 20 countries, including an effort to curb trafficking in the Balkans. Since 2001, the Washington branch of Zonta has also awarded over $280,000 in scholarships to women attending Washington, DC area universities, and undertaken projects to improve the status of women in the Washington area.

Mary Ellen Bittner, chairwoman of the Zonta Club’s Advocacy Task Force and the immediate past president of Zonta International, said that supporting the two AP peace fellows would be consistent with the club’s commitment to young women and Zonta’s desire to engage in challenging issues.

“We hope that Michelle and Leslie will help us to better understand trafficking, and what we can do to prevent it,” Mrs Bittner said. “We also want to support these courageous and enthusiastic young women in their crucial work.”

Trafficking reaches deep into the villages of Nigeria and preys on the superstition and poverty of Nigerian girls to lure them into the sex trade, which can be extremely violent as well as abusive. Thousands of Nigerians have been trafficked to Italy. Hundreds are rounded up by the Italian police each year and forcibly returned to Nigeria, where they are often treated as outcasts.

In Turin, TAMPEP sends mobile teams out onto the streets to offer medical, social and legal support to Nigerian prostitutes. This spring, TAMPEP also opened an office in Nigeria, to spread the word about the risks from trafficking.

The two AP fellows described themselves as excited at the opportunity. “This is a chance for me, as a Nigerian woman, to give back to other young girls back home, and most importantly, to serve as their voice,” said Ms Ibeanusi, an American national whose family is from Nigeria. “Trafficking and sex slavery must stop.”

Ms Ibeanusi is studying for a master’s in public health at George Washington University. She was elected Miss Nigeria-USA in 2004 and has been using her status as a celebrity to advocate for women’s health in the US and Nigeria. Ms Lanspa will be reporting back to the Georgetown University branch of Students Stopping Trafficking of People (SSTOP) and organizing an event on her return to the US.

• For more on TAMPEP, email them.
• Visit the Zonta Club of Washington
• Visit SSTOP