Safe Haven for Children Rescued from Human Trafficking

Support and care for children rescued from slavery.

UNICEF defines child trafficking as "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of children for the purpose of exploitation". Every year, 1.2 million children are trafficked, and over half of these children are African. Trafficked children are used in armed conflict, small-scale mining, hazardous work in agriculture and industry, commercial sexual exploitation and domestic labor.

Often, children that escape trafficking have no place to go and don't speak the native language. They end up as street kids with no money or means of getting home.

CREER-Africa is the only center in The Ivory Coast that provides children who have escaped from slavery with a safe place to eat and sleep. In addition to room and board, children living at CREER have access to counseling, academic instruction and vocational training. CREER provides children with the tools necessary to successfully integrate back into their home community.

You can help. Each $25.00 donation provides shelter, education and food for a child liberated from human trafficking.

Update from the Field

August 2017

Thanks to YOUR donations, CREER has been able to continue providing care for children that need a safe house. Your generous donations have made it possible for outreach workers to visit the region's remote villages via a small scooter. These outreach workers spread awareness about trafficking and child labor to community leaders and do research in the local region to find children that need assistance. Pictured to the left is a group of outreach workers educating community members in a remote village. Your donations have also helped to pay for the three daily meals these children receive at the safe house. The children eat nutritional meals of rice, vegetables, and meat or fish, as well as a daily snack of whatever locally-grown fruits are in season.

CREER has managed to repatriate a number of the children they take in. The children they take in are returned to a safe home with the start of an education, and leave healthier and more nourished than they came in. One child that has been helped by your donations is a fifteen-year-old girl from Togo. She was found on the side of the road selling drinks from a bowl on her head. She was taken from her home in Togo and trafficked by an extended family member that repeatedly beat her. Her clothes were worn and ragged and she was barefoot when CREER found her. She was taken in and stayed at the safe house for just under a month. She was helpful and polite and spent her time studying the books donated to the center. CREER was able to locate her home and return her to loving family members. She is now back in school and much happier thanks to your donations!

August 2016

In the summer of 2016 a mistreated child was found in a cocoa worker camp. He was only aged 7, and the size of a 3-year-old. He was severely malnourished and left with a plastic bottle of dirty water to drink. Although this child isn't a victim of trafficking, his father, who is from Burkina Faso and works on a cocoa plantation, had badly abused and mistreated his first son. CREER's center spent almost two weeks going to and from the doctor's clinic with a long list of prescription medicine for him to fight infections in his wounds and iron supplements for anemia. A cost that increases each time, the first of several doctor's prescriptions was in the area of US$40. These additional costs on top of the day to day costs to feed and clothe the children, as well as the rent, utility bills and providing a range of education to children who often haven't been to school is a difficult but necessary burden to the budget. The owner of the plantation was very happy to see the change in this boy within a month. He was keen that CREER do more to assist children and is now a great contact to have within the cocoa community. An extra pair of eyes and ears where many trafficked children are working.