Centre d'expertise en agression sexuelle Marie-Vincent

Published purpose

As part of this 45-month project, the Centre d’expertise Marie-Vincent will develop and implement a trafficking and sexual exploitation prevention project that will help increase knowledge and improve support to promote the empowerment of at-risk youth, particularly youth under the care of the health and social services network and youth served by community-based youth organizations in three target regions of Quebec. This goal will be achieved through a needs analysis and a literature review, which will help develop prevention tools based on the literature and tailored to the needs of youth at risk of trafficking and sexual exploitation; these tools will be developed in collaboration with a monitoring committee made up of key partners. The tools, along with training to accompany them, will help strengthen the capacity of people in institutional and community settings working with youth who are at risk of or survivors of trafficking. The tools and training will also help identify a promising practice that effectively promotes prevention among the target population. The project will include an external assessment to be conducted by the Marie-Vincent Interuniversity Research Chair in Child Sexual Abuse. The goal of this external assessment will be to evaluate the promising practice developed, tested, and implemented during the project. The evaluator will be from outside the organization and have the experience and expertise needed to conduct the assessment. The supplementary funding will be used to scale the project and adapt the tools and training modules to meet secondary schools’ needs related to preventing youth trafficking and sexual exploitation. Interviews will be conducted with school staff and partner organizations to determine specific areas where the promising practice can be adapted into universal teaching strategies, as opposed to more direct strategies used with at-risk youth. Training specifically designed for preventing human trafficking and sexual exploitation in secondary schools will be offered online and in person to frontline employees at secondary schools in two distinct administrative regions of Quebec.