Photograph: NGO Atina archive

Social entrepreneurship as a means of economic empowerment of women and girls who survived human trafficking​

Association Atina has, with the support of UN Women – United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, successfully facilitated training for the first group of Atina’s beneficiaries through the project "Social entrepreneurship as a means of economic empowerment of women and girls who survived human trafficking“. The key activity in social inclusion of human trafficking victims is economic empowerment, which is one of the crucial steps toward helping persons who survived some form of violence or human trafficking become independent. Through economic empowerment of women who survived some form of exploitation, not only are the risks of re-trafficking reduced, their participation in labor market is also affirmed, and the chances are increased for them to land a job on an equal footing as all other persons seeking employment. In this way not only is the position of these women, who normally fall under “hard-to-employ" category improved, but human trafficking is suppressed, and competitiveness on the labor market increased, which benefits entire community.

Within the implementation of economic empowerment activities, aside from the support in acquiring theoretic knowledge aimed at increasing their general capacities, beneficiaries are also provided with practical training taking place in Bagel Bejgl shop. All beneficiaries have continuous support in their job search, which is an additional value of this program, as beneficiaries might not find a job related to the training they undertook, but they are also learning how to search for jobs in the areas they decide to specialize in later. This is an important psychological component in economic empowerment, as the women who survived human trafficking need support to start searching for jobs, without perceiving labor market as a distant, closed, and inaccessible system, but as a framework within which they can equally participate and improve their life. In addition, social entrepreneurship is a good framework for practical implementation of economic empowerment program, because it enables women survivors of human trafficking to learn about the ways in which they can team up with other women, become more active, or engaged in socially responsible and useful businesses.

Planning and implementation of trainings for two more groups of beneficiaries is currently ongoing.  

Through the support of UN Women, it is planned to organize training for a total of 20 beneficiaries of Association Atina.  

This text was produced in the framework of the project "Support to Priority Actions for Gender Equality in Serbia", implemented by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) with funding from the European Union. The views contained in the text are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of UN Women, the United Nations or any of its affiliated organizations. The project is part of the initiative for supporting women entrepreneurship, women in rural areas, decreasing labor market and employment discrimination, encouraging dialogue on the importance of economic empowerment of women and exchange of knowledge and information among women entrepreneurs.