In Gadung Sari on August 19, 2005, exactly 2 years after the first PD workshop, a lively group of 15 cadres from the village and 2 from other villages, LPKP staff, and village leaders assembled to talk about what has happened in their village. The discussion is lively and frank. "Anti-trafficking" is the operative word, and more impressive still are the results achieved in just 24 months.
1. No new girls have left Gadung Sari to enter the sex trade (massage parlors, brothels etc.) since the beginning of the PD anti-trafficking program.
2. Twenty averted attempts at girl trafficking have been documented. ("Averted" is defined as a high-risk girl, i.e. between the age of 15-18 and not in school, who had been approached by the broker, or who had filled out travel papers to leave the community for "unknown employment", who was persuaded not to leave).
3. A community "Watch Group" comprised of 15 members, one from each of the village hamlets has been established. The "Watch Group" maps the community and identifies high risk girls. The girls' families are then visited by the Watch Group for counseling.
4. Submission of travel papers requiring anyone planning to leave the village to indicate their new address and purpose of work are now rigorously enforced. Watch Group members use the papers as a warning sign that the girl is clearly at "high risk", and follow-up with an immediate counseling visit to the family.
5. A Girls Forum (club) has been created and is located in a house donated by a local citizen. The club is open 4 days a week and provides the first-ever, opportunity for village girls to have a designated place where they can meet, discuss issues of mutual interest, and enjoy activities such as reading, painting, sewing etc. A village volunteer is present at the center every day to address questions including those related to risks of "leaving the village". The center also provides girls with the opportunity to tutor younger girls in reading and math, thus enhancing their own self-esteem and feelings of "having an important role to play in the community".
Based on strategies discovered during the Positive Deviance Inquiries, skill training is being offered to increase "at risk" families' income and lessen dependency on "outside income".
The village leader has already approached District Government officials concerned with the issue of girl trafficking and has received a commitment for funds to expand training opportunities for girls in the village. He has also has met with Ministry of National Education officials at the district level to include trafficking/health risk issues into the regular school curriculum.
The taboo against talking about trafficking has been broken as witnessed by anti-trafficking messages routinely delivered in the Mosque, at boys and girls Korhan reading sessions and in schools.
The community held a contest in which each hamlet submitted two anti- trafficking posters created by community members. Of the 30 posters submitted by the 15 hamlets, 3 were chosen to be reproduced in calendar-form. Two thousand of the anti-trafficking calendars were then printed and distributed to each household in the community and to district and provincial government offices. The calendars prominently display the name of the village.
With support from the Oak Philanthropy Limited foundation, Save the Children has been partnering with a local NGO to develop community based advocacy against trafficking in East Java, where girls are sent to work in the sex industry (December 2002 - December 2005). Through a Positive Deviance (PD) approach, the Grassroots Anti-trafficking Initiative aims to reduce the number of girls trafficked into the sex industry through appropriate and sustainable grassroots anti-trafficking initiatives. SC and its local partners are currently implementing this project in 6 new villages in East Java, known to sending a large number of girls into the sex industry. Thus far, local partners and local cadres from six villages have made the following key accomplishments in this program:
1. Established a map on flow of migration to understand the number and purpose of women and girls leaving their village and identify at risk girls.
2. Established the community watch group in every hamlet; identified alternative economic opportunities for women and girls through the Positive Deviance Inquiry
3. Developed a community based anti-trafficking campaign, including posters and pocket-books based on the words of PD families and girls and enforced the used of travel documents for work migration.
In addition, the local volunteers from the first village where the PD approach was tested successfully, have become trainers for five neighboring villages so that they can also address child trafficking.These volunteers (the very same who were unable to even say the word " trafficking" two years earlier) have produced their own video to highlight the accomplishments of the community in addressing the problem of girl-trafficking.
The sub district (kecamatan) head has started an advocacy campaign and approached the district government to allocate more resources to address child trafficking. Another positive and far reaching result of this program has been the change of attitude among the cadres and the government towards the complex problem of girl trafficking: from a fatalistic attitude "There is nothing we can to solve this complicated problem" to one of hopeful and purposeful action based on the existing solutions they discovered in their communities. A strong sense of ownership emboldened the village government to commit resources to disseminate their anti-trafficking efforts to neighboring villages and to strengthen the anti-trafficking network among the villages.