This year together with our partners from New Moment New Ideas Company, Masters of the broadcasting and Rabota.bg, we used a more provocative approach to draw the attention of people looking for seasonal or permanent positions abroad to the risks of becoming involved in a trafficking situation for labour exploitation as well as to show them how to spot dangerous and misleading offers.

The campaign is ralized with the support of:

The campaign is implemented with the media support of the „Masters of the Broadcasting” TV show and in official partnership of Rabota.bg, the National Commission for Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, the Employment Agency, the Agency for Social Assistance, Directorate General “Border Police” and Bulgarian Posts Offices.

Visions of the campaign:

Page of the campign:

http://animusassociation.org/zelen-haiver/

Look out for the monkey business

You are looking for a job abroad because you need more money? Do you know that work abroad may turn into trap. You can be misled, cheated out of your money and exploited and thus became a victim of human trafficing?! When in need people often underestimate the risks and ignores the threats.

You don’t want to be involved in this monkey business, right?

It is up to you to avoid fraud and exploitation!

How misleading work ads look like?

Take a look at this job offer!

• High remuneration. Sounds enticing! But do you really believe that anyone without qualification can receive 130 euro per day?! The daily rate for non-qualified workforce in EU countries is between 20 and 90 euro in the sectors of agriculture, construction, services and domestic work (depending of the country and the sector).

• No skills and knowledge required. So this means that anyone can do the job, including you! Each job requires some knowledge and skills, as well as some experience. It is very suspicious if there are no requirements, at all. This can mean that people might be recruited for the wrong reasons.

• You can only contact the employer by email and this email is in one of the most popular web platforms for personal email. How convenient! No phone and address of the company?! This might be a sign that such a company does not exist and someone with the wrong intentions represents him/herself for employer. Someone who counts on you to see and apply for the job and then to misuse you and exploit you.

• The job is collecting green caviar. How interesting! Did you check if there is such a thing like green caviar? Because there no such thing as green caviar, as well as no blue strawberries and yellow blueberries.

Never respod to such job offers, if you don’t want to be trapped, beaten, tortured and forced to work without payment.

How to recognize dangerous job offers

Check carefully the job offers for abroad in order to prevent being misled, deceived or involved in human trafficking for the purposes of labour exploitation. It is not too hard to notice the deception:

• The job offer provides only a telephone number/email address which is not a corporate one.
• The intermediary company requires money for transportation.
• The company is not registered in the Employment Agency Register of Intermediaries.
• You are not provided with the address or contact information of the employer abroad.
• You are not given a labour contract or the one you have is in a foreign language.
• They do not give you a job description.
• They do not provide you with the papers for taxes paid to institutions, etc.
• They insist on taking your personal documents.
• Accommodation conditions are not confirmed by the employer or the intermediary company.

Human trafficing for labour exploitation is happening more often than you can imagine especially in EU countries where there is a larger demand for low wages and unskilled workforce.

The deceivers are very often people from your close circle of friends and family, people you trust. 

Call us on the FREE Hot Line One call can prevent many troubles!

We can provide you with information about the risks when taking up a job abroad; we can provide consulting/counseling and together we can assess whether the job offer is dangerous. We can check if the intermediary company is rel and we can point you out to the relevant institution where you can report if somebody is voilating labour rights or is exploiting you.

If you are involved in traffic and labour exploitation, if you are not being paid and you live in miserable conditions, give us a call so we can help you!

Call us before you leave abroad to work

BULGARIAN AUTHORITIES FOR LABOUR AND SOCIAL SERVICES ABROAD:

BULGARIAN AUTHORITIES FOR LABOUR AND SOCIAL SERVICES ABROAD:

DIPLOMATIC REPRESENTATIONS (EMBASSIES) OF BULGARIA ABROAD:

In December, 2014, Animus Association Foundation started the implementation of a two-year long project, Introducing Participatory and Child-Centered Approach for Early Identification and Prevention of Bullying in School Setting in 7 EU Countries, in partnership with 6 NGOs from Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands.

The overall goal of the project is to involve children in preventing bullying and in creating safe environment at school through a participatory, interactive and empowering way.

We are proud to inform that the project was ranked first among EU projects.

The project activities include:

1. Creating and enabling environment for school children (aged 7-16) from the 7 participating EU countries to share their views on bullying and engaging them in a participatory process of social change in the school setting

The participating countries will provide for social platforms that enable students to share their personal opinion and experience on the topics of bullying, violence and safety. Students will have the opportunity to be active participants throughout the whole process. 90 students in Bulgaria will take part in interactive workshops and will share their opinion and suggestions regarding bullying in the context of their schools. Another 90 students will have the chance to partake in the preventive workshops, providing concrete guidelines and programs that the children could apply in situations of bullying. Animus Association Foundation will provide psychotherapeutic programs and psychological support to 120 students, victims of bullying, as well as their parents. AAF centre will provide counseling to victims of bullying as well as perpetrators.

2. Developing a child-centered approach for building teachers’ capacity to respond timely to bullying in school settings

The project provides for intensive and long-term active capacity building training of 12 teachers, aiming to improve their capacity to identify bullying timely and to react in situations of bullying and collaborate with children and other stakeholders. There will be supervisions and methodological support regarding specific cases of bullying.

Additionally, there will be an extensive training for a total of 120 teachers in the framework of 6 trainings.

3. Enhancing community stakeholders’ capacity to intervene in bullying cases

The project envisages activities to improve the capacity of stakeholders from the wider community to react in situations of bullying and collaborate with children. 10 500 parents will be targeted with information materials on early signs of bullying and 160 parents will be empowered to provide support of their children.

4. Lobbying for a child-centered approach in designing and applying anti-bullying policies and prevention programs

Through a multi-level child-centered approach, the project aims to evaluate the present legal framework related to bullying prevention in the 7 participating countries and most importantly aims to instigate a public dialogue for policy recommendations.

Project Materials/Deliverables:

• Book with children’s visual materials on bullying
• Teachers’ manual with guidelines and method tools
• Leaflet for parents (10 500)
• Research report
• Recommendation paper

Technical Information of the Project:

Original Title: INTRODUCING PARTICIPATORY AND CHILD-CENTERED APPROACH FOR EARLY IDENTIFICATION AND PREVENTION OF BULLYING IN SCHOOL SETTING IN 7 EU COUNTRIES JUST/2013/DAP/AG/5372

Funding: European Commission, DAPHNE Program

Main applicant: Animus Association Foundation

Partner organizations:  Save the Children (Romania)
LDI (Slovakia)
City of Gothenburg (Swede)
SPI Forschung (Germany)
Barnardo’s (UK)
ICDI (Netherlands)

Duration: 1 December, 2014 – 30 November, 2016

Funded by the European Union

We offer different time commitment opportunities for our volunteers.

These opportunities include, but are not limited to – psychological and social work, administrative work, work on projects, fundraising and public communication.

If you are interested in a different kind of volunteer work and would like to discuss the possibility of such, you could contact us on e-mail- animus@animusassociation.org, to discuss your idea.

Volunteers have always been an important and appreciated part from Animus Association Foundation team.

In September 2014, a coalition of 10 NGOs started a campaign To Be a Father. The goal of the coalition is to focus public attention on the importance of the father’s role in full development of the child.

To Be a Father is part of the international MenCare – A Global Fatherhood Campaign, happening in over 20 countries in 5 continents. MenCare aims to support men in their role as caring, fair, responsible and non-aggressive parents and guardians in order to provide full development of the children. In Bulgaria the campaign is supported by the Oak Foundation.

In the framework of A Global Fatherhood Campaign, Animus Association Foundation will conduct a series of trainings for kindergarten teachers and social workers aiming to build their sensitivity towards the role of men and develop good practices for the active involvement of men in children’s lives.

The significance of men for the full development of children is essential. There are about 3, 5 billion men and each one of them differs from the rest – there are tall and short, rich and poor men…

But there is one thing that unites a huge part of them: 4 out of 5 men are fathers. Even if he is not a biological father, almost every man in the world is related to a child in the role of a stepfather, brother, uncle, grandfather, teacher, guardian, coach or just friend.

The first studies of fatherhood in Bulgaria show that in most cases, because of expectations to provide the money at home, there are still many men in Bulgaria that remain outside of child care in the family[1].

In order to support fathers, all partners in To Be a Father Campaign initiated the filming of the first professional video in support of fatherhood in Bulgaria. The video shows moments from the life of fathers and their children in an intriguing and emotional way and encourages us to think about the importance of their relationship.

Main partners: Animus Association Foundation, Bulgarian Gender Research, Gender Education, Research and Technologies, For Our Children Foundation, Tulip Foundation, National Network for Children, Applied Research and Communications Fund, Association Roditeli (main coordinator), Center of Women’s Studies and Policies.

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[1] Национално представително социологическо изследване: „Нагласи, практики и бариери пред активното мъжко включване в грижите за деца – 2014“ и Нагласи към бащинството  в България – 2012.