Pathways to Freedom

Nigeria is a source, transit, and destination country for sex trafficking. It is the third most common crime in Nigeria after drug trafficking and economic fraud. Benin City (Edo State), where we are headquartered and where this Project will be implemented, is internationally recognized as the most endemic source for sex trafficking in Nigeria, with built-in trafficking infrastructures and networks. In recent years, sex trafficking from Edo has seen traffickers trafficking victims from Edo State to other African countries/Middle East.

Desperation has grown, as Nigeria faces an economic downturn (inflation 33.69%) and survivors struggle to afford basic necessities. Recruiting in Edo is again on the rise, rendering survivors of sex trafficking at risk to retrafficking as conditions that initially rendered them vulnerable continue to persist. Those who are endeavoring to resist the lures of traffickers struggle to  reintegrate, as access to basic needs (i.e., medical care, shelter, food, etc.) are economically unattainable, triggering the trauma of their prior trafficking experience. 

Compounding the issue, the lack of advanced tools and shared learnings limit the scale and sustainability of service providers’ interventions. The disaggregated approach to serving so many has diverted time and energy from more holistic and strategic service. 

 As noted, the scale of need is seismic, while solutions continue to be fragmented and insufficient. Service providers and other stakeholders lack the tools and technology that would enable them to scale and reach more. One of the primary causes is due to the lack of coordination among service providers and tools that could facilitate more efficient service delivery. Often service providers operate independently, leading to survivors and vulnerable populations often receiving duplicative services or experiencing gaps in services. 

PJI recently launched the Coordinated Care Mechanism (CCM), Nigeria’s first state referral mechanism for service providers, in Edo State for more effective coordination and shared learnings. As part of the CCM, PJI developed an Availability Dashboard, an online referral tool for 30+ service providers to update their availability (i.e., # rooms, # openings for available shelter, trainings, etc.) in order to more efficiently determine the availability of each others’ services. However, due to unreliable internet and the absence of a CCM mobile version, access is challenging. Additionally, as various CCM shared resources are currently only accessible using a shared Google drive, case management is still primarily conducted on paper, taking away time for more strategic servicing.

To further address the challenges, PJI also developed HERSAfrica.com (Hub of Economic Resources for Survivors), Africa’s first and only digital ‘one-stop’ resource hub for survivors to address the unique/complete needs of African survivors as they navigate towards self-sustainability and economic independence. While over 3 million impressions have been recorded since our launch in September 2022, only 367 survivors are registered users. As such, the platform is not reaching the thousands that could potentially benefit due to the absence of marketing and feature upgrades that would make the existing resources more readily accessible. Optimal coordination is also required for current PJI survivors.

Our solution is the development/upgrade of 2 online portals: 

1. The CCM Portal. This Portal will offer an online and mobile hub of tools and resources for Nigerian service providers to amplify their impact. It will consolidate and upgrade existing online tools to save administrative time allowing for more strategic implementation of programs, more time servicing survivors and better visibility for the communities. Importantly, it will be co-created with CCM members and co-developed with survivors, to understand how members can more effectively serve survivors on their paths to healing. These tools can then be utilized as a template for other regions across Africa trying to reach more survivors and offer more coordinated care.

More specifically, the CCM Portal will serve as a centralized website and mobile application containing all the tools for a service provider to adequately serve trafficking survivors – online case management, CCM Availability Dashboard, surveying tool to collect and analyze survivor progress and feedback on programs, resources and shared learnings and news shared among members. The Project would afford PJI the ability to tailor existing case management software for Nigerian needs and connect with the CCM Availability Dashboard. It will offer calendar integrations with participant scheduling and automated reminders, more effective caseload monitoring and management to track their progress and offer advanced reporting and analytics, survey data integration to record their feedback and improve services, closed loop referrals connected to the Availability Dashboard– all with mobile compatibility. The Project will also upgrade the Availability Dashboard with enhanced features that include facilitating ‘find and filter’ functions for services and build out a more robust mobile app so that all referrals can take place on the app. The Portal will also house shared news and resources/ library of learnings.

2. The PATH (Personalized Action to Healing) Portal: Additionally, this Project will build out a similar portal and mobile app for the survivors PJI serves. The Project will support an upgraded HERSAfrica platform (additional instructional video content/ upgraded counseling tools and Directory) which will be linked to the PATH Portal that will feature calendar and self-scheduling connected to case management software, communication tools to stay updated and a new feature to rate and provide ongoing feedback to help improve service delivery and the portal itself. Given the challenges trauma creates, a centralized portal to access all information related to care would allow survivors to simply focus on healing.

PJI has already developed and piloted these tools but in a disaggregated and basic format. It would benefit from more survivor centered design and easier to navigate features as well as a more secure data environment. PJI is a leader in gathering and co-designing with survivor co-creation and co-development. Additionally, it will hire survivors and develop a survivor advisory board for quality control. 

Both of these portals would be the first of their kind in Africa and offer a model for other regions to reach and serve more in a scalable, practical way. 

 https://hersAfrica.com

https://ccm-staging.hersafrica.com

Generally, hacking to access confidential data has increased across Nigeria in order to exploit and capitalize for ransom. As such, with survivor personal stories and case information going online, privacy and confidentiality are the greatest risks. This is precisely why ensuring the resources and the latest technology and learning to develop a secure data environment will be critical. As such, we will be utilizing SOLID code principles to ensure strong code quality, high security, data compliance, and other high standard metrics and practices. We will also include the privacy policy page in the portals and comply with software application requirements to offer the ‘delete account’ option to protect user data and management. 

Additionally, using technology can feel daunting for trauma survivors and features not designed for them can render technological solutions irrelevant. To mitigate this, we will create an Advisory Board consisting of psychologists, survivors and tech experts to provide input at each phase of development to ensure design is user friendly, simple, trauma-informed and survivor centered. 

This Project ultimately serves women survivors of sex trafficking across Nigeria. Although HERSAfrica.com is available to the public, it is targeted to at-risk women and girls as well as survivors throughout Africa, given the language and cultural references. The PATH Portal will initially be made available to PJI survivors, while the CCM Portal will serve the CCM members in Edo State, Nigeria. However, as we market and advance these solutions, we expect that survivors and service providers across Nigeria and Africa will benefit.

More specifically, HERS Africa and the PATH Portal target those who cannot readily physically access a programming center due to distance, as many survivors live in remote local areas. In addition, many of these women have limited funds for transportation and/or are challenged by medical or social-emotional reasons given the physical and psychological trauma trafficking produced. While computers are not readily available, smartphones and data plans are distributed widely by service providers to provide access to the internet. And due to trauma and how it can limit executive functions, simplifying access to resources is critical. Rather than having to retain information for multiple websites and applications, the PATH Portal will centralize the many communications, online counseling and content for PJI trauma survivors.

Service providers, on the other hand, struggle with the various, disaggregated tools due to lack of time given the pressing needs and growing numbers of so many survivors. These tools are designed for understaffed and under-resourced staff (who are the majority in Africa) who could benefit from added ease and time in order to serve clients more effectively and efficiently. 

PJI is the only organization in Africa to develop bilateral, donor funded technology for survivors by creating both HERSAfrica and the CCM, a coalition of service providers with the goal to coordinate care for survivors. 

The foregoing have only been accomplished through PJI’s committed staff and leadership that have accessed world-class experience and earned the trust of the local communities (40% of our cases are from word of mouth local referrals). It is noteworthy that PJI has been nationally recognized by two of Nigeria’s government agencies addressing human trafficking and unsafe migration (NAPTIP and NCFRMI) for its innovative efforts and contributions to the anti-trafficking space via its grassroots approach. The Executive Director of PJI and team lead, R. Evon Benson-Idahosa, is a globally educated Nigerian woman (from Benin City, Edo State) and an accomplished former partner at a corporate law firm in New York City, with extensive networks throughout Nigeria/Africa. Based in Nigeria, she understands the power of interventions that employ international standards of excellence, yet are locally relevant and survivor, community informed. She was also named a 2023 TIP Report Hero by the U.S. State Department in 2023 in light of her commitment to eradicating sex trafficking in her home state and as a result of her and her team’s innovative use of technology in addressing human trafficking.  

The Director of Strategy and Development, Suzi Chun-Turley, also contributes her corporate background from top tier consulting and finance firms towards PJI’s strategic programming and growth. Her experience working with women survivors of sex trafficking has helped develop many of the movement’s innovative solutions. Kure Glory leads the technology solutions at PJI and has been instrumental in developing Africa’s first website for survivors and its first online referral coordination mechanism technology solutions. Our staff, leadership and Board are predominantly women (98%) who have similarly chosen to use their acquired corporate skills to eliminate the demoralization and subjugation of African women and girls.

Finally, our survivor advocates group (‘The Voice’), which will be instrumental in this Project, also assists PJI in the design, iteration and implementation phases of our projects. Because they are credible messengers with the requisite lived experience, they are able to provide real time intelligence which has led to PJI’s recognition as the leading anti-trafficking organization in Nigeria. 

PJI has been in various stages from piloting to scaling the various technology solutions since 2022. This Project would be prototyping the consolidated versions into a single portal.  

HERS Africa, as an initial hub for survivor resources, was created in 2022. It has already recorded over 3 million impressions and has almost four hundred registered users. It continues to scale to additional regions in Nigeria. This Project would add additional features and rebrand it as a more comprehensive portal to scale even more. We have been piloting specific additional features with a small group of survivors to test how these additional features should be incorporated. It would also be linked to the new PATH Portal, which has already been developed and piloted, but in a disaggregated and basic format. As noted above, our current version would benefit from more survivor centered design that makes it easier to navigate features as well as a more secure data environment.

The CCM availability dashboard will be taken out of prototype and rolled out to the 30 CCM members in the Summer of 2024. The additional features that will be consolidated into a new portal will also be prototyped during Summer 2024.  

The MIT Solve Challenge will provide critical financial and technical resources as well as credibility to amplify and scale PJI’s impact. While the financial resources will help to develop technology solutions, it is the additional capacity building support that make this Challenge most appealing. The monthly cohorts and coaching will upgrade and elevate the skills for PJI staff and the Nigerian development team to be able to develop, iterate and implement these and other innovative solutions after the challenge. In addition, the marketing and awareness these solutions will generate will ensure greater scale and adoption of these tools across Africa as well as accelerate additional funding.  

Current services to survivors of sex trafficking as well as resources for service providers are mostly direct and in-person in Nigeria. Because the scale of the needs is so great, PJI has pioneered online alternatives for those survivors who cannot make it to programming centers as well as online tools to expedite coordination among service providers. They were the first of its kind for both Nigeria and Africa. We are highly regarded as technology innovators in Nigeria’s anti-trafficking space. 

The PATH Portal for survivors would provide a simplified trauma-informed access online point for survivors to receive training, to connect to counselors, to coordinate their services with providers and to find community among other survivors. Nothing like this exists in Africa, especially since many survivors are in remote villages, may not be able to afford transportation to service providers, may get overwhelmed by group trainings and struggle to find trainings in their dialect. Additionally, with communication and surveying tools, it will be able to gather real time feedback on the quality of services or get insights on trafficking trends.  As an online consolidated hub, the portal could easily quantify and report on site activity that would further the movement. For example – it could easily report on trends such as which services are most in demand in a particular region to help service providers adapt its services or identify which regions have the most survivors seeking services to identify gaps for service providers or even show where recruiters were targeting returned survivors. 

The CCM Portal would create a more cohesive and better coordinated care delivery for survivors. It is the first state referral mechanism of its kind in Africa to have a digital solution for coordination where service providers can go online to one site in order to make referrals, ensuring survivors are accessing appropriate care, to record and manage cases, to communicate with other providers and access resources and shared learnings. Collaboration and partnership among service providers are critical aspects of U.N. Development goals as well as one of the major gaps identified in Nigeria’s Trafficking Gap Analysis. 

This Project aims to see more survivors on a path to freedom and sustainable economic independence and to prevent retrafficking. Our decade long experience and proven model have esstablished that survivors are able to do this when they are provided with holistic services such as counseling, training for economic development and connected in a community that supports their healing. The PATH Portal, which will be linked to the upgraded HERSAfrica.com, will achieve this digitally, thus simplifying access, scheduling and communication in a centralized way that is more trauma-informed and reaches more through marketing and additional features. Those features include trainings in additional dialects, filter and search functionality of services that is more intuitive and automated reminders and communications for in person programming – elements that will make it easier for trauma survivors to receive the care they need to ultimately achieve sustainable independence.

The CCM Portal helps to achieve this impact by equipping service providers to be more effective and thus, to have more time to provide services strategically. More specifically, by offering a centralized online platform to make digital referrals, manage cases and store communications and share learnings, providers no longer have to take the time to call multiple providers to determine availability, manually record and manage cases via paper or search across a variety of platforms for best practices. Rather, they will be able to optimize their time to work with more survivors or serve them better. Additionally, an online platform enables more efficient tracking and thus more insightful reporting and analytics to improve care and impact. 

Finally, we are wholly convinced of the feasibility of these solutions because they were co-designed alongside those they will serve, i.e., survivors and service providers who are the foot soldiers and pioneers of this work across Nigeria. They are credible messengers who have  their ears to the ground and provide us with real time intelligence. Furthermore, our decade long experience also supports our proven model and track record of success, having served over 4,000 survivors, with a 0.00% retraffficking rate. 

PJI’s desired impact is to ensure survivors are on a path to independence, while simultaneouly prevent retrafficking. We measure this by the number of women we serve who have not been retrafficked annually (currently maintain a 0.00% retrafficking rate). We do this by following up and monitoring survivors for at least one year after they have completed their PATH (Personalized Action to Healing) Plans- a tailored rehabilitation plan– with PJI. For this specific project, we will also track input and output indicators to track progress.

For both portals, output indicators are selected to identify their effectiveness. They include the number of active and new users, usage on the site, and user ratings from survivor feedback surveys. The number of active and new users and usage data can be easily recorded and tracked over time from website analytics. These reveal the level of adoption each portal is gaining. Feedback data from survivors will be surveyed on an ongoing basis to rate the effectiveness and ease of use of particular features on the site and its overall contribution to the transformational healing we desire to see. In general, our goals for feedback are that over 80% would recommend a service or feature.

Input indicators for both portals will include data on activities PJI is conducting to ensure these output indicators progress. Examples include the number of features added on the site, % of desired content developed and uploaded, the number of surveys administered and % completed. Each of these are a measure of activity that can be easily tracked by program administrators as part of their monthly reporting.

The core technology that powers our solution are web-based and mobile application (Android and iOS environment) software tools developed using PHP, laravel framework, flutter and database integration.

Full-time staff – 4

Part-time staff – 0

Contractors - 1

Two years.

At Pathfinders, we believe that modern slavery amounts to a crime and a fundamental violation of human liberty and dignity. Any such violation, whether in our workplace or via external dealings, is contrary to our core beliefs and the vision of the world we endeavor to create. 

As a result, we are intentional about creating a workplace that upholds those beliefs. We are grounded in a culture based on dignity and flourishing for each individual, regardless of gender, race, title, or function in or connected with the organization. We start by hiring and retaining those with similar values and aspirations, regardless of race/ gender, providing on-boarding and on-going training of our policies that remind each staff member of the value of every individual. In addition, we maintain a zero-tolerance approach to any form of exploitation or offensive behaviour, and model same via our leadership and in our written policies which must be acknowledged in writing by every staff member. We are also committed to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls, as well as transparency and accountability to ensure the beliefs are put into practice. Honest and open communication (we maintain an open door policy) has been a central component of the culture. Restorative justice practices and a trauma-informed lens are also part of the working culture. 

In addition, we have long maintained the following policies: Anti-Modern Slavery Policy, Abuse and Sexual Exploitation, Anti-Sexual Harassment Policy, Human Resources (HR) Policy and a Whistleblower Policy. We conduct annual reviews of these policies to ensure that they are up to date and relevant to the evolving times. Finally, we also maintain a robust feedback mechanism that allows employees to safely (and without a fear of retribution) provide honest feedback to the leadership in an effort to collectively make our organization better rounded. All employees also maintain a self care plan, participate in team bonding activities and retreats and have access to professional counseling services.

Our solution to Nigeria’s sex trafficking problem is a program designed to holistically prevent sex slavery/sexual violence and liberate more enslaved women and girls in Edo State and Nigeria through the direct eradication of root causes. Through a comprehensive and tailored approach, each beneficiary is more fully protected against traffickers and retrafficking. 

PJI believes that empowerment and education are powerful accelerators out of poverty, a factor that often forces the women we serve to view prostitution as a viable, economic alternative. As such, we strive to empower and educate marginalized young women so that they are awakened to and have access to additional viable possibilities. Via customized survivor-centered interventions, female survivors of violence and sexual exploitation will receive basic support, free medical, counseling, as well as vocational skills and financial literacy training, start-up business capital, job placement and/or education scholarships. We want to ensure that every young woman in Edo State has access, i.e., an opportunity to live a life that is dignified and one that is graced with self-determination and agency. 

PJI is a nonprofit organization and has consistently remained sustainable since its founding in 2014 through generous donations from governments, foundations and individuals. Since 2020, it has received over $1 million in grants for its technology related projects from PISCCA (French Embassy in Nigeria) and the U.S. Dept of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Additionally, we have individual private donors and board members who have supplemented funding in the past to ensure such projects remain financially sustainable, covering recurrent costs. As we promote this Project and make it more visible through our communications plan, we anticipate increased donor interest.