Provide education, life-skills, and health programming to young women aged 14 to 19 seeking asylum in the United Kingdom.

Why we care: Without family or adult support, many unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the United Kingdom are exploited and trafficked—together, we can change this.

How we’re solving this: Providing a 12-week learning program that includes English language lessons, UK cultural awareness, and health and sexual education. 

Each year, unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the United Kingdom arrive in the country with nowhere to go, making them one of the most economically and socially excluded populations in the country. These young women come from all over the world, but the majority are escaping the perils they face in their homelands of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Africa. Many of these young women are still trying to cope with the aftermath of the conflict in Sierra Leone, including losing their families or being subject to the terrible atrocities that occurred over a decade ago.  

Once arriving at the airport in the UK, these young women apply for asylum, at which point they become candidates to receive our support. As these young women are not citizens of the UK or the EU, they are isolated from mainstream social services such as education, government assistance, and healthcare. During the long and difficult process of requesting access to such services, these young women often fall vulnerable to exploitation and sex trafficking. That is where we step in.

The Global Fund for Children is helping these young women make a positive transition to adulthood and reach their full potential through a 12-week program that focuses on improving health and well-being and developing life-skills. These life-skills include activities as basic as learning how to use public transportation, how to access social services, how to attend school, how to prepare for job interviews and career planning, all of which ultimately lead to building and strengthening their self-confidence.  Working specifically in Worthing, the county of Kent, and Hillingdon, these young women are enrolled in a formal educational curriculum that includes English language lessons, UK cultural awareness, and health and sexual education. In addition, these young women receive one-on-one mentoring and engage in group counseling sessions to help them reflect on their past as victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking. The funding for this project will be used to train staff to provide these counseling services, create education materials and compensate program staff for the 12-week course.  The program aims to help these young women build their new future. 

According to local social services, as many as 90% of children in the UK identified as at risk are re-trafficked into sexual slavery, domestic service or forced labor. Through this project, 87% of the youth mentored in the program report that they are now safe and have had no further contact with their trafficker. Through this program, young women gain the ability to better express themselves, become more resilient, and build a bright and productive future.