Peel Region's anti-human trafficking hub set to reveal 'significant expansion'
· Toronto Sun
When Peel Region’s anti-human trafficking initiative expands its reach this week with a hub at Pearson International Airport, it will bring Timea Nagy’s journey from victim to advocate full circle.
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The founder of Timea’s Cause was trafficked through Canada’s busiest airport as a confused young woman from Hungary, who was lured here on the promise of a summer job before being forced to work in strip joints under the threat of financial ruin and eventually violence to herself and her family.
“I actually have a tattoo of YYZ (Pearson’s airport code) on my shoulder,” Nagy said Friday in an interview ahead of Monday’s expansion of nCourage, an anti-human trafficking integrated service hub helping victims in Peel Region.
“That’s where I left my life behind and I found a new life, one way or another. So (being there for Monday’s announcement), it means a lot to me, it means more than I can explain in words. It’s very symbolic.”
Increasing concern within the region
To kick off Victims and Survivors of Crime Week on Monday, nCourage will announce what it calls a “significant expansion” of its wrap-around anti-human trafficking services that are led by Peel Children’s Aid Society and include things like health, legal, social service and educational support.
In addition to its headquarters in Mississauga and the new hub at Pearson airport, nCourage will be extending its reach into Brampton and Caledon and bringing two new partner organizations on board with Victim Services of Peel and Caledon Dufferin Victim Services joining groups like the Elizabeth Fry Society and Our Place Peel.
The truth is the expansion is sorely needed.
Peel CAS chief executive Mary Beth Moellenkamp said the nCourage program has already seen a 40% increase this year in children and youth identified as potentially being trafficked and that is in a region — the GTA — believed to be home to more 60 % of Canadian human-trafficking cases .
“As a system, we’re becoming increasingly concerned about the exploitation of the children and youth that come to our attention,” she said in an interview on Thursday.
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Children, youth in CAS system especially vulnerable
That is because children and youth in the CAS system are a prime target for traffickers as their “trauma, abuse and neglect history” make them especially vulnerable, Moellenkamp said.
“They are often searching for that sense of belonging,” she said. “And so as we think about, you know, mental-health supports, any increase in need for that, even hearing more and more about children and youth who are experiencing suicidal ideation and other challenges, these are some of the precursors that can make children and youth vulnerable.
“So if we don’t have a preventive response that is bringing systems together, my worry is that we’ll continue to see this increase and will continue to be reactively responding to the issue versus proactively working together as systems and organizations.”
Prevention is one of the reasons why nCourage set its sights on Pearson, which Moellenkamp said offers a “unique intersection” with the child-welfare system. She said being there will allow nCourage to work with their federal partners to ensure children and youth end up in safe hands.
“We respond to child protection concerns there,” she said. “We may be responding to a child or youth coming from another country who is an unaccompanied, separated minor and may be making a refugee claim and at times we do have children who come through who are being trafficked or have been trafficked.
“We have built protocols with our federal counterparts and we work very closely with them, but it is often difficult for us to get there quickly. And so sometimes you only have a few moments, right, to have everybody there (to help a child escape an exploitive situation).”
Success start with collaboration
It is that collaborative approach, Nagy said, that has allowed the nCourage program to become a model for similar programs not only in Canada, but around the globe.
“nCourage was born out a community effort, out of many different organizations putting their heads together and saying, ‘OK, how can we do this together?’” said Nagy, one of the people who helped “plant the seeds” for the program’s creation.
“I can tell you this: I have travelled the world and I have not seen the collaboration and the success that I have seen in Peel Region … It’s that big of a deal.”