Finding Our Way Through the Traffick

Christa Foster Crawford

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781911372202
• eBook ISBN: 9781911372936
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Where Do We Go from Here? We want to help others find freedom – lasting freedom – from trafficking and exploitation. But the process is as fraught with challenges as it is filled with calls to do better. What are the best routes to effectiveness? How do we avoid common pitfalls? This book brings together decades of experience to help us navigate the complexities of responding to holistic needs in prevention, intervention, rehabilitation, and reintegration. It also explores how to prepare ourselves as organizations and individuals for the journey ahead. This companion to Stopping the Traffick is an essential guide for practitioners, donors, and academics to successfully Find Our Way through the Traffick.

PART I

HOW MUST WE PREPARE OURSELVES TO RESPOND WELL?

Introduction, by Christa Foster Crawford

When it comes to caring for people who have been trafficked and exploited, good intentions are not good enough. We must ensure that we respond to the needs of those we serve with excellence in practice. This means that we must prepare ourselves to respond well – both individually and as organizations.

Many of us have been called to work against trafficking and exploitation in response to hearing compelling stories of injustice and evil. We respond because our hearts cannot do otherwise. Although the need is compelling and the desire to respond is commendable, we must respond from our heads as well as from our hearts. Our responses will fall short if we fail to examine the complex causes and holistic effects of the problem, and neglect to evaluate our responses in the light of best practices. The rest of this book helps prepare us to better understand the complexity of the problem and to navigate challenges in responding more successfully. Thus Part I helps us to prepare ourselves.

As individuals we must examine our motivations and balance passion for the cause with knowledge about how to do it best. One way to increase our knowledge is through reflection and research, both formal and informal. Throughout this volume, we ask questions that do not have easy answers. The goal is to have us think about how we respond and why we respond the way we do. Sometimes the answer will be that we are responding well. Other times we will realize that we need to do better. Research – including evidence-based practice (discussed in Part VII of this volume) – is another way of examining the effectiveness of our response, as well as understanding the context in which we work better.

But as much as we need to improve our ‘head’ response, we cannot neglect our ‘heart’ response either. We must recognize the benefits of a passionate response, but also the dangers. We must build in safeguards and practices to prevent us from being overwhelmed by the depth of the problem and the extent of the work, and to learn to thrive rather than just survive.

We must prepare ourselves as organizations as well. We must understand the components of healthy organizations, and build ministries that don’t just survive to meet the next immediate need, but rather actively plan for success and sustainability over the long haul. We must also ensure that our programming incorporates what we learn from our research and reflection, and that good policies and minimum standards of care are in place.

About Part I

Part I of this volume looks at the importance of preparing ourselves to respond to trafficking and exploitation, and explores key issues to consider in preparing ourselves individually and organizationally.

The chapters in this Part respond to five key questions:

•How can we promote sustainability and succession in terms of vision, leadership and funding for the organizations we work with?

•How do we actively advocate and promote good policy and minimum standards of care with our own/partner organizations?

•How do we get a balance between a passionate approach and a thoughtful approach?

•How can we maintain a passionate approach without being overwhelmed by suffering and pain?

•How can we look after ourselves and others better, and reduce the possibility of vicarious and secondary trauma?

This Part begins with a focus on preparing ourselves as organizations.

First, Helen Sworn reminds us of the importance of planning for success and sustainability. Leadership succession is an important step towards the goal of sustainability in vision and funding. Sworn explains that intentional, strategic, long-term planning is required and provides an outline of six key areas of knowledge that are necessary for succession planning. She then describes four essential building blocks that must be addressed: mapping competencies and influence, sharing vision, mentoring/coaching, and building the actual structure consisting of a foundation of trust that is supported by policies and systems, and covered by accountability and oversight. Finally, Sworn points out common road blocks to success including misunderstandings and miscommunications and ‘Founder’s Syndrome.’

Once a solid organization is in place, it is necessary to ensure that the programming is also sound and effective. Sarah Chinn reminds us that organizations need good policy and minimum standards of care to ensure that the people we serve are kept safe and well cared for. These standards can exist at the organizational or governmental level. Where they do not yet exist, organizations can play an advocacy role in advancing their development and implementation. Chinn explains six types of roles that are needed for successful advocacy: expert, researcher, networker, volunteer, communicator and servant. She ends with a case study that illustrates how a group of organizations helped the government of Cambodia develop minimum standards of care.

David H. Scott explains that responding from our hearts does not mean that we cannot also respond with our heads. Our heads and our hearts are connected, and we need both in order to respond well. Scott then explains how we can improve our ‘head’ response through research and critical reflection on what we learn. In fact, research and reflection must be essential parts of our response, not merely extra add-ons. Finally, Scott describes several different methods of research and provides instruction for any organization to incorporate research and reflection into its practice.

Next, this Part addresses preparing ourselves as individuals.

Mindy Kalee describes what it is like for care-givers to be overwhelmed by the pain of people who have been traumatized by trafficking. But she also shows how suffering shared can connect us with those we serve. Kalee reminds us that the ‘passion’ that draws us to this cause has its roots in the concept of suffering – the same suffering that Christ himself endured. Kalee helps us to understand passion, and also to transcend it, through a process of self-examination. She challenges us to explore how our own suffering is involved in our being called to respond to the suffering of others, and how acknowledging our own need for healing can help others to heal as well. Finally, Kalee also reminds us that helping others who have been traumatized can also cause us as care-givers to experience vicarious trauma. She describes symptoms to watch out for and provides advice for how to acknowledge and address it.

Finally, Patti Pierce shares a case study about a ‘Soul Care Retreat’ for workers who were overwhelmed by the needs of caring for victims of trafficking. The retreat provided psychological support and strategies for dealing with vicarious and secondary trauma.¹ The retreat sought to not only provide refreshment while the retreat was taking place, but also a process for sustaining ‘soul care’ when the workers returned back to their jobs. Pierce explains the key components that made the retreat a success.

¹ Practical resources about secondary trauma and self-care are included in the Recommended Resources for Part I.

CHAPTER 1

HOW CAN WE PROMOTE SUSTAINABILITY AND SUCCESSION IN TERMS OF VISION, LEADERSHIP AND FUNDING FOR THE ORGANIZATIONS WE WORK WITH?

Helen Sworn

In any sector or context, but especially within a developing country, it is critical to plan and advance succession processes to promote an effective and sustainable future for the organization and ultimately the movement that we are working within.

The non-profit/NGO sector has traditionally been less inclined than the private sector to look at long-term vision and strategies, often being focused and reliant on external, short-term funding and project cycles. Counter-trafficking organizations within this non-profit sector are a classic example of this environment, as well as also having a disproportionate number of expatriates occupying key leadership and funding roles, which adds to the challenge of local long-term vision and sustainability.

The concept of sustainability has multiple interpretations within the non-profit environment. These range from donor expectations that non-profits will eventually be able to fund themselves, to ensuring that those we work with will either no longer need our services or that the government or others will eventually adopt the vision and activities that we initiated. At best, the thought of planning and implementing succession for sustainability is not considered when many of us are focused on and often overwhelmed by the day-to-day leading, managing and funding of our organizations and programs. There is also an added challenge that the longer we are involved in an organization or program, the harder it is to extract ourselves or even consider stepping back for the sake of long-term sustainability and succession in terms of vision, leadership and funding.

Perhaps you are not sure if this is relevant to your organization or you are too busy to address it, but you are not alone!

Others have gone there before you and have learned many lessons that you can learn from and be encouraged by. I hope that this chapter will help pave the way for you to move forward on this journey of sustainability and succession, and that the examples, processes and resources from both organizational and Biblical frameworks provided can be valuable resources for you on this journey.

Leaving a Legacy

I consider leaving a legacy through leadership succession as a critical pathway to many of the aspects of sustainability of vision and funding.

In more recent years there has been a growth in resources and research that has grown out of the discourse around development aid and sustainability in the broader non-profit sector. These have often been polarized around the need for a more bottom-up local response versus a top-down international intervention.

Going back to Biblical times, there are relational models of succession in both the Old and New Testaments that include the examples of leadership transition from Moses to Joshua before entering the Promised Land as well as that of Paul who instructed Timothy to continue the work he had started. Jesus chose to impart his vision and mission not to a single successor but to a diverse team of twelve disciples at the very beginning of his ministry years, and spent his time living among them and teaching them in order to send them out to establish his church in preparation for his death. These examples help to illustrate that leaving a legacy for sustainability is both critical and relevant within a spiritual as well as a developmental context.

The implications of these models show us the importance of the need to work intentionally to develop long-term plans and processes around succession and sustainability. Crucially, these plans and processes must move beyond the short-term areas that our donors or ourselves focus on with our current projects, or those that serve as a ‘bail out’ option when we need (or want) to leave at short notice.

Planning and Process

As outlined above, succession and sustainability is not something that will just happen with time; we need to be intentional and strategic in our planning and processes ahead of time. The outline below is by no means an all-inclusive checklist for succession planning (which is highly diverse depending on the specific developmental, organizational and national context) but offers some aspects to c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction to the Book
• Part I: How Must We Prepare Ourselves to Respond Well?
• Part II: What Should We Question about Our Language and Assumptions?
• Part III: How Can We Protect Children and Vulnerable People from Harm?
• Part IV: How Can We Do Prevention Well?
• Part V: How Can We Respond Holistically to Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking?
• Part VI: How Do We Address Challenges in Outreach?
• Part VII: How Can We Ensure Excellence in Aftercare?
• Part VIII: How Can We Ensure Survivors Live Safely and Successfully?
• Recommended Resources and Works Cited
• Contributors
• Back Cover