The International Organization for Adolescents

Nearly a quarter of the world’s population today are adolescents (between the ages of 10 and 19)—the largest contingent in history.  Youth in a globalized world are facing new challenges and vulnerabilities.  One organization, based in Chicago, is tackling some of these vulnerabilities both domestically and abroad.  The International Organization for Adolescents (IOFA) focuses on youth who are at increased risk across the globe, including orphaned youth aging out of care, young people living in social isolation, youth in conflict areas, youth afflicted by extreme poverty, and youth who have been trafficked or exploited.  IOFA’s programs are based on a human rights framework that emphasizes youth participation in identifying pressing issues and developing interventions to address those issues. 

Currently, IOFA’s work is focused on the prevention and intervention of human trafficking.  The organization has partnered with Loyola University’s Chicago Center for the Human Rights of Children to create a system of identification of trafficking victims that can be used by state workers.  IOFA also provides training and consults with child welfare providers in Illinois to develop response protocols for victims of youth trafficking.  The organization works closely with the Cook County Human Trafficking Task Force to develop a coordinated social service network for referrals when law enforcement officers and task force members identify a victim of trafficking.  Recently, IOFA has expanded their operations to New York City as a second site of intervention work, brining these strategies to a new city and increasing their own impact on youth trafficking in the United States. 

Child Right Infographic

The ChildRight Program—IOFA’s main project—emphasizes the participation of community members in developing intervention strategies.  Steering committees for the overall campaign, as well as sub-committees in different regions, are made up of practitioners, experts, concerned community members, and other child welfare organizations.  The input from all of these parties contributes to a comprehensive blueprint for state action and still leaves room for innovation at the local level.   Each locale develops its own community-based action plan that will address key issues identified by the larger committee, but each action plan is tailored to the specific needs and capacities of the community.  This philosophy of community participation and leadership is reflected in IOFA’s other initiatives across the globe, which helps the organization to adapt its services to meet specific local needs, empowers the local community, and contributes to the wider knowledge of trafficking’s causes and effects. 

As organizations like IOFA continue to work on issues that affect vulnerable children and adolescents, they must also make room for participation from the population they seek to serve.  Rights-based frameworks for child welfare emphasize the necessity to respect young people’s agency, power, and voice, but this component is usually ignored in practice.[1]  Although adolescents are not at the same developmental stage as adults—who conduct research, design programs, and evaluate interventions—they are still experts on their own lives and have valuable insight into the social issues that IOFA and other youth-focused organizations seek to address.  IOFA has made great strides in the field of trafficking intervention and prevention, and intentionally works with communities to develop grassroots strategies that complement broader policy changes and multiple levels of society.  Opening dialogue space to vulnerable adolescents to contribute to program design, implementation, and evaluation can only strengthen the model. 

---

[1] McIntyre, Angela.  2003. Rights, root causes and recruitment: The youth Factor in Africa’s armed conflicts. African Security Review ,12(2), pp. 91-99.

Congratulations Lori!

Lori on the annual SSA Mumbai Trip

Congratulations to Lori Yi Long who has found a job with the Chinese Mutual Aid Association!

The Chinese Mutual Aid Association is a manager of senior services in the Chicago area, serving mostly Chinese immigrants and those of Chinese descent.  The organization provides home care, a program which Lori has been hired to expand.  The program hires “homemakers” to cook, clean, provide companionship, and run errands for senior citizens and also provides caseworkers that work closely with senior clients.  Lori will develop strategies for outreach, evaluate the program’s efficacy, and develop opportunities for funding and program expansion.  The Chinese Mutual Aid Association has told Lori that she is integral to the growth of the organization, and they couldn’t have found a better person!

Lori is excited to begin her career with this organization and is glad for the opportunities that the International Program of Study provided for her to better understand the experiences of international populations.  She is a little anxious as well, but she attributes this to the fact that she will start her career as a social worker just a couple of weeks after getting married!  We wish Lori all the best and look forward to seeing how she increases the capacity of the Chinese Mutual Aid Association. 

Empowering Refugee Women--Heshima Kenya

The welfare of women and girls in the developing world has been a constant topic of conversation in international social welfare.  Gender violence and women’s education are on everyone’s lips this month as the world struggles to develop a strategy to rescue the 250+ girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria. Although countries and societies have made comparatively rapid progress in the advancement of women’s rights, economic opportunity, education, and health in the past 50 years, there is still much work to be done.  Debates in the West center on strategies to empower women in less-wealthy nations—how do we respect women’s agency, develop culturally appropriate programs and policies, and create sustained change? 

Hilary Presper, a second-year admin student at SSA, has been wrestling with these questions in her internship this year.  Hilary is placed at Heshima Kenya, an organization based in Chicago that works on the ground in Nairobi to assist unaccompanied and separated refugee women and young girls.  Heshima Kenya’s safehouse shelters 100 girls and provides them with mental health services, educational opportunities, and mentorship. “It’s extremely important [to the organization] that the girls are able to follow their dreams,” Hilary says.  The organization’s empowerment model of service and development focuses on creating equal opportunities to these refugee women and girls, affirming their right to self-determination but also guiding them as they create lives in a new country.  These refugee girls and young women are provided with academic education as well as lessons in Swahili and Kenyan life.  They face the added challenged of integrating into an alien society, on top of being unaccompanied, generally lower-educated, and often young mothers.

One of the newest developments in the organization has been the Maisha Collective—an entrepreneurial project that teaches the girls and young women to hand-dye scarves which are then sold around the world. As part of the Maisha Collective, members are required to attend financial literacy and parenting classes as well as work regularly with a caseworker. The organization pays the women for their work, which is not based on the profit of the scarf sales.  In this way, the Maisha Collective works in a similar way to Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs, which have been shown to improve women’s social and economic standing in a variety of cultural contexts.  The hope, Hilary says, is that the collective will become self-sustaining and client-led, furthering the women’s agency in their resettlement process.  The idea for selling the scarves as a revenue stream came from the clients themselves, showing that Heshima Kenya is committed to remaining culturally sensitive and client-driven.

This year of internship with Heshima Kenya has allowed Hilary to reflect on different international social welfare and development strategies.  “It’s weird coming to terms with being an NGO in this problematic environment,” she says.  On the one hand, Hilary recognizes that Heshima Kenya serves a niche population that would otherwise be unassisted—the Kenyan government does not have social welfare programs for refugees and many of the girls face extreme prejudice in Kenyan society.  However, Hilary also sees the NGO-ization of development and social welfare as a problem in a part of the world that needs a strong government presence in this area of service provision.  The fact that the Heshima Kenya was started by two Westerners—one of whom is the Executive Director, also has the potential to be problematic.  But, Heshima Kenya seems committed to employing indigenous workers when possible so that strategies can continue to be effective, sustainable, and culturally appropriate. The organization only employs Kenyans on the ground, though Hilary thinks the organization would be willing to hire a former client.  “The problem is that they come to us with such low levels of education,” she says.  “There hasn’t been anyone yet who could pursue professional training.” However, the organization has been able to connect in Chicago with a former client who has resettled in the United States, a young woman who has become an integral staff member.

Heshima Kenya’s model adheres to the philosophy of successful women’s welfare services:  empowering women, creating space for clients to participate in the program development and evaluation, and remaining flexible to adapt to culturally specific conditions.  You can read more about Heshima Kenya at their website (http://www.heshimakenya.org/index.php) and learn about one client’s story through an online graphic novel (http://grassrootsgirls.tumblr.com/Fatuma). You can also contribute to the organization’s work by purchasing a beautiful scarf made by the Maisha Collective—just in time for summer!