Programmes

Details about our ongoing and past projects.

“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” Dr. Desmond Tutu

Programme Exit
This is a 3 year consortium programme, thanks to Fondation Pellon Belon, where PSGR is providing exit pathways to survivors of prostitution and sex trafficking. The programme empowers survivors with vocational skills in areas of tailoring, hair dressing and baking so they can become economically independent and be able to support their families. Economic empowerment is an important strategy to improve survivors living and working conditions. Economic empowerment is essential to achieving women’s rights and gender equality, ensuring women can equally participate in and benefit from decent work and social protection; access markets and have control over resources, their own time, lives, and bodies; and increased voice, agency, and meaningful participation in economic decision-making at all levels from the household to international institutions.

Justice for Girls Project
This is purely an advocacy campaign project in collaboration with our partner Equality Now. The campaign project aims at engaging the government to account for its commitment made to protect girls and women from sex trafficking and other forms of sexual violence. Often times, cases of sex trafficking are not taken seriously. Investigators will sadly blame the victim and weak investigation reports are produced. Prosecutors usually don’t understand what sex trafficking is. So the campaign is raising awareness to everyone in the whole ecosystem – communities, police, hospital staff, magistrates, and pretty much everyone in the value chain to understand how sex trafficking manifests itself.

At the same, PSGR litigates on those cases with potential to slip through the cracks of justice and deny the victim access to justice. We hold the perpetrators and traffickers to account for their actions. Their actions are against the law and must be held responsible!

Provision of shelter and housing
Many women PSGR is working with are usually homeless, living in rented properties and have to engage in prostitution to pay rentals, bring food on the table and provide needs for their children. PSGR is currently providing housing to 17 survivors to ensure the survivors and their children have shelter. PSGR also provides food on monthly basis, pay school fees and other basic needs such as shoes, school uniforms, etc to their children and siblings.

Outreach and Awareness
Staff and volunteers from PSGR undertake awareness and sensitization to educate communities about sex trafficking, prostitution and forced child marriages. Prevention is the first step in the fight against sex trafficking and these crimes. To sustain awareness and sensitization, PSGR is build resilient communities, mobilizing them to remain vigilant against any suspicious people who recruit children and women and report them to proper authorities. PSGR is utilizing already available community based structures, likes churches, mosques, youth groups, traditional chiefs, etc as contact points but also equipping them with skills and knowledge to fight trafficking at grassroots level.

Campaign to End Child Marriages
Malawi is amongst 10 countries in the world with the highest rates of child marriage. 50% of children are married before they are 18 years of age and 1 in 2 girls is married before she turns 18 years of age. PSGR is working in schools to build capacity of girls to prevent child marriages and instead develop career goals. Our Life Planning Skills Clubs have now reached to 55 schools in the Southern Region of Malawi. The impact of these clubs is incredible – confidence of girls we work with has increased and are able to speak out against any forced marriages, develop personal strategies against unwanted pregnancies, prevent STIs, etc.

PSGR is also working with government and other key partners to ensure domestication of the SADC Model Law on Eradicating Child Marriage and Protecting Children Already in Marriage. By adopting the SADC Model Law we are hopeful to trigger policy reforms and development or revision of substantive laws in the country. The SADC Model Law is based on international human rights instruments already committed to by Malawi, making it easy to comply with her international obligations.

Advocacy with African Union
– in 2018 two minor girls were trafficked from rural area of Neno District for sexual exploitation purposes at a pub in Manje Township, Blantyre. They were forced to sleep with multiple men, slept in poor conditions and the food they ate very poor. The girls later escaped after being sexually exploited and suffering untold dehumanization for 2 months at the pub. But in bizarre circumstances, the girls were abducted from the police victim support unit they were kept and the police prosecutor immediately requested for bail release for the trafficker, who at the time appeared before Blantyre Magistrate Court. PSGR picked this as a case with potential miscarriage of justice and therefore, strategic litigation interest case. The Maggie Case