Newsletter, October 2018

Dear <<First Name>> <<Last Name>>
Welcome to the newsletter from EXIT-trafficking.
In the following you can read about our two primary projects, the Night Light Café in Copenhagen and the safe house Greater Love Lighthouse in Nigeria, as well as other initiatives with the goal of going against human trafficking. You can also read about current research, politics and debates in the field.
Happy reading.

My meeting with Joy
I have been a volunteer in Night Light Café since February 2018 because some friends of mine encouraged me to become a volunteer. I meet Joy in September 2018. It is her first time in the night café, and I notice her closed body language. I go over to her to talk. It takes time for her to open up, but suddenly she tells me that she has a problem that she would like my help with. Joy has only been in Denmark for three weeks and does not have a network to pull on. Joy tells me that she would like to be checked for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). I can see that this is not easy for Joy to tell me, and I offer my help immediately.

On the following day, I contact the health service at The Nest International, who offer the service of testing for STDs, and book an appointment with them. I call Joy to tell her the time and place but she does not know Copenhagen very well so she would like for me to accompany her to the test. Joy is nervous when I meet her, so I tell her that she is doing the right thing by being checked.

While we are waiting for the blood test results, Joy writes down her birth date and I notice she is just two years older than me. She starts telling me her story and it affects me a lot: Joy has an education in Hotel Management but she could not find a job in Italy; therefore, she ran the risk to go to Denmark after being offered a job in prostitution. She tells me she does not want to be in this industry and that her mother in Germany thinks she works as a cleaning assistant. At this point the conversation stops because her test results are ready. When Joy is told that she does not have any STDs, she smiles – this is the first time I see her smile. Before we part our ways, we agree to go together for her next test.

This experience has shown me how a small gesture can make a big difference. To me, it is a joy to be able to help the women who come to the café also outside of the opening hours, because it means our effort manages to reach beyond just meeting the different needs on Wednesday nights.

Told by Mayada Magdi Mohamedani (picture), volunteer in Night Light Café and a student of anthropology. Joy is not the real name of the woman.

Business cards initiate good talks

In Night Light Café we have created small business cards which we lay around the tables in the café and also give to the women. On the cards we pose questions that can form a base for reflection and occasion for a good talk about life and its many facets. I used a card one night in the café where I and four other women talked about what is most important: faith, family or friendship. Three of the women said that they think faith is the most important because their faith in God lies deep within their nature and culture, and the last woman said family. The women also asked me what I thought was the most important. This touched me deeply because it demonstrated an equality in which the interest between woman and volunteer is equal – and this is exactly the type of place we wish for Night Light Café to be.

Told by Pauline Damm, volunteer in Night Light Café and psychology student.

New, Danish ambassador in Nigeria

On September 1, 2018, Jesper Kamp took office as the new Danish ambassador in Nigeria. Anne Abok, international manager of Media Coalition & Awareness to Hault Human Trafficking, and Karin Kjærgaard, project manager in EXIT-trafficking, visited him in September. After a brief presentation round with updates on ongoing projects, his first question was: “now, how do we move forward?” This excites the project manager:
“What a wonderful question to receive, and what a ‘push in the back’ from a newly appointed ambassador – this is going to be great! And yes, we are in full swing defining activities for 2019 and 2020,“ says Karin Kjærgaard.

For reflection: "money is everything"

“Money is everything!” This is what Favour told me one night in the Night Light Café where I am a volunteer. We talked about the influence of money, and I tried to challenge her position by asking if having a lot of money always equaled happiness. Can you not be rich in money but at the same time struggle in life and for example feel loneliness? Favour said that in her upbringing in the Nigerian culture, money was not only necessary to get food on the table, a job and a better future for the family; no, because “if you have money you have friends,” she told me. In Nigeria many friends will choose you for money, and the more money you have, the higher the status you have in your network.

Prestige and money also plays a role in the Western world, but maybe in the Western cultures in general, we usually do not think as much about the influence of money? Many of us have easy and almost automatic access to money compared to Nigerian women and we rarely lack the basic necessities for survival.

I have always thought, that money played a role in why women from poor conditions in Nigeria end up on the streets of Copenhagen to sell sex, but I come to realize more and more throughout my time as a volunteer in the night café, how deep and wide an influence money has on Favour and the other women in the Night Light Café.

By Karina Højgaard Jensen, volunteer in Night Light Café and nursing student.
Favour is not the real name of the woman.

New, international conference

The international conference in Abuja has been long underway, but now it will finally be happening on November 20-21, 2018. Both project manager Karin Kjærgaard, EXIT-trafficking’s partner MeCATH (Media Coalition & Awareness to Hault Human Trafficking) and the Danish ambassador in Nigeria, Jesper Kamp, will attend the conference. The other participants are representatives from Center against Human Trafficking, The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, International Organization for Migration, other NGOs and journalists. Each participant will hold a presentation with focus upon their effort against human trafficking throughout the last five years, based on the questions: how has it been, how is it now and how can it become? The conference will end with a written letter of intent and there will be set up a work group of five people who will plan a larger international conference in 2019.

English website and make-over

Three volunteers have worked hard on giving the website of EXIT-trafficking a make-over and we are now ready to show off the improved version. At the same time it is now possible to read the website in English. We think it looks pretty great so click here and enjoy.