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. 

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[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.