Photo Credit: USAID/Albania   Flip-chart postings around the workshop room document the discussion between Greek street workers and their Albanian counterparts.

Meeting Signals Opportunity for Closer Transnational Cooperation

Street Workers Cross Border*
Meeting Signals Opportunity for Closer Transnational Cooperation

May 27, 2005 | Elbasan, Albania

A classroom full of rowdy, boisterous 11-year-old boys and girls belies the fact that some of these children are victims of trafficking.

Liana Chatzigeorgiou, a street worker from Thessalonika, visited this classroom in Elbasan. Following introductions, a boy began to speak in Greek—an odd talent for a native Albanian in a community without a large Greek minority.

“That child could be one of the children working on the streets of Greece,” she said “I’m shocked to see them back in Albania.”

Chatzigeorgiou and the seventeen other Greeks who came to Albania for a week-long workshop hope that child and countless other Albanian children continue their childhood at home, rather than on the streets of Greece.

Greek street workers met with their Albanian counterparts in Tirana in May 2005 to discuss ways to enhance their collaboration to combat child trafficking. They visited Albanian schools receiving prevention training, and toured the Roma communities where incidents of trafficking are common.

“We brought together Albanian and Greek social workers because NGO collaboration shouldn’t mirror the lack of collaboration between the governments,” said Vincent Tournecuillert, former head of the USAID co-funded Transnational Action against Child Trafficking (TACT) project. 

According to Tournecuillert, this meeting was an opportunity for Greek and Albanian NGOs “to come together and discuss what is working well and what is not, how we should change our approach, and how we can develop a personal relationship to support a stronger working one.”

Throughout Greece and Italy in the mid 1990’s, a person would see Albanian children of all ages begging and selling items on the streets. These children, either through deception or naïve volition, were moved across the borders illegally by traffickers.  Once apart from their families and communities, they were subject to exploitation and abuse. In order to assist victims, civil society organizations in all three countries began to organize and work together across their borders.

The USAID co-funded TACT project has worked for more than two years alongside other international donors to help prevent, protect, educate, and assist in the voluntary return and reintegration of trafficked children in Albania.

TACT’s transnational NGO partner in Greece, ARSIS (The Association for the Social Support of Youth), provides assistance to Albanian children trafficked and exploited there. Street work conducted by the organization identifies Albanian trafficked children and is responsible for the assistance and protection of the children while in Greece. Albanian counterparts work on tracing the child’s family and evaluating the possibility of either integration in Greece or return to Albania.

Collaboration between Albanians and Greeks is often unseen, relying on the close cooperation of individuals and lessons based on trial and error interactions. Communication is paramount for the safe and effective treatment of children.

“When working in collaboration with NGOs in Albania, you tend to take for granted some issues,” said Sofia Adam, a Program Development Advisor for ARSIS in Thessalonika, “We are here today to stop and have a look at what we’ve been doing.”

At the workshop, Greeks and Albanians were asked to act out their interactions with trafficked children in a role-playing-type activity.

“My Greek compatriots were shamed by my performance” admits Chatzigeorgiou embarrassingly. “The street work we do in Greece focuses on the status of the child right then and there—we haven’t considered the relationship the child has with a larger community environment as the Albanians are doing.”

Both Chatzigeorgiou and Adam, through ARISIS, were involved in the largest and most visible transnational anti-trafficking effort between Albania and Greece during the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.

“The response and prevention program really showed what we can accomplish” due in part, Adam noted, to the official acknowledgement of the street worker in social sector programs. “The State knows that it can’t wait for a child to knock on its doors, but must go out and collaborate with NGOs to get the job done,” she explained.

The Olympic Games last summer helped accelerate Albanian and Greek collaborative efforts with positive results—one of which being an awareness for the need of this kind of workshop.

This meeting will help to strengthen the ties between NGOs, according to Adam. “It has reached a satisfactory level, but it could be much more efficient; the knowledge of who is doing what across the border allows you to know how to target your work.”

For Chatzigeorgiou, the workshop answered some of her questions about her counterparts. “Instead of always asking why, why, why,―I can see that the systems work differently and have different challenges.”

A soon to be published report will detail the best practices and future ways of collaboration based on the findings of the workshop. Efforts are already underway however―Chatzigeorgiou is expected to be the first Greek social worker stationed in Albania on a long-term basis.

The bilateral agreement on the protection of Albanian children who are victims of trafficking in Greece will increase the transparency and effectiveness of the process. A draft agreement was forwarded to both the Greek and Albanian governments in 2004, with follow-up comments between Albanian and Greek governments in the spring of 2005. A formally signed agreement is still pending.

* "Street worker," as used in this text, is not intended to imply a comparison between the type of work performed by the Greek case workers and the type forced upon the street children in Greece. The term "street worker" is used by the Greek case workers when they refer to themselves and their assistance to street children. The term derives from the location where street children work and are vulnerable to being victims of trafficking in Greece. They are forced to beg and or sell items on the streets until late at night, must hand over their earnings to their traffickers, and are usually malnourished and mistreated.