International Outreach and Advocacy Program

BITAHR is currently conducting research and advocacy on the ground in marginalized international communities.

With all its beauty, Uganda has been subject to untold brutality as a result of a civil conflict spanning more than two decades. The children of the North have been targeted for abduction, forced fighting and sexual exploitation, all perpetrated by the rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

In May 2009, Alicia Foley Winn traveled to Uganda with a group of students, humanitarians, and professors to investigate the situation of former child soldiers in the Northern region. She also identified critical service providers to serve as local partners with our programming there.

These partners are already serving former child soldiers by providing shelter, job training, and psycho-social care. BITAHR hopes enable these partners to add quality education to the services these young people receive.

Thousands of orphaned and abandoned children live on the streets in Romania. Without the basic necessities to survive, these children are at a high risk for sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Foreign sex tourists, pedophiles, law enforcement, and pimps and sex traffickers sexually exploit these children, engaging them in prostitution, pornography and other sexual acts. Offenders often act with impunity because police and law enforcement are sometimes complicit in the sexual exploitation of street children.

Organizations and social services directed toward the sexual exploitation of street children are limited, leaving many victims of sexual exploitation without rehabilitative support. Research Associate, Meredith Gamble is conducting a study identify the factors that contribute to street children's vulnerability to sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Meredith's research is conducted on the ground in Bucharest and throughout Romania and includes interviews and focus groups with current and former street children, as well as staff at the organizations that serve them.

It is our hope that at the conclusion of Meredith's study BITAHR will be able to assist these organizations to prevent and redress sexual exploitation of Romanian street children.
It is our hope that these partnerships are mutually beneficial to BITAHR and the local partner, and that they ultimately allow both agencies to serve a greater number of vulnerable youth.