REQUEST FOR ESF FUNDING

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 DHAKA 000776 SIPDIS E.O. 12958:N/A TAGS: KWMN KCRM PHUM ELAB PREL SMIG ASEC PHUM PREL BG BGPGOV SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR ESF FUNDING E.O. 12958:N/A TAGS: KWMN KCRM PHUM ELAB PREL SMIG ASEC PHUM PREL BG BGPGOV SUBJECT: SOLICITATION FOR INCLE FUNDS REF: 2005 STATE 221416 ¶1. Per reftel, post is forwarding the following TIP proposal submitted from the Daywalka Foundation. Post supports the enclosed proposal. ¶2. Daywalka, in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration (IOM),submitted this 2 year proposal for funding in 2005 with Post's input and support and was approved for funding. Per telephone conversations with the G/TIP Office, Post was told that it was not necessary to re-submit the proposal in order to receive the 2nd year of funding (2006). However, the Daywalka Foundation received different information from its contact with the State Department, and so we are submitting the proposal even though the deadline has passed. Post apologizes for the delay and the confusion. ¶3. This is a two year project, originally designed to be implemented in 2005 and 2006. However, due to administrative delays, as of February 13, 2006 the grant recipient has received no USG funding. Year 1 will thus begin when funding arrives, and year 2 12 months after that. ¶4. Daywalka's proposal follows: BEGIN TEXT ¶I. Title of Project South Asian Regional Counter-Trafficking Capacity Building: A proposal to create the Women & Children's Security Resource Center (WCSRC)-Dhaka - Second Year Funding Cycle II. Name of Recipient Organizations The Daywalka Foundation (Daywalka) & The International Organization for Migration (IOM) III. Duration of Project Two Years IV. Description of Projects On 26 September 2001, IOM organized a roundtable discussion entitled "Anti-Trafficking Initiatives: Bangladesh and Regional Perspectives". The meeting included representatives from the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Home Affairs, Police Headquarters, ADB, CIDA, PSU-CIDA, NORAD, Sussex Centre for Migration Studies, USAID, UNIFEM, Care Bangladesh, Save the Children Denmark, Focal Point Save the Children Alliance, ATSEC Bangladesh Chapter, Rights Jessore, INCIDIN Bangladesh, Ain-O- Salish Kendra, News Network and RAMRU (Dhaka University). See, Revisiting the Human Trafficking Paradigm: The Bangladesh Experience Part I: Trafficking of Adults, The Bangladesh Thematic �00A;Group on Trafficking, IOM, 2004. The result of this initial session was the creation of the Bangladesh Thematic Group (BTG) with the ongoing coordination of IOM. Participants attending subsequent meetings of the BTG have included numerous representatives from governments, donors, IOs, NGOs, universities and law enforcement agencies. Daywalka in cooperation with IOM, proposes to increase the capacity of the BTG to combat human trafficking by establishing a Women & Children's Security Resource Center (WCSRC) in Dhaka, Bangladesh to institutionalize ongoing support for the BTG process. In Bangladesh, the various sectors that adults are often trafficked into include: the sex industry, domestic servitude, industrial work, hard labor; bonded labor, organized begging, bar girls, the fishing industry, and more. Migrant labor sectors include the industrial sector, provision of services (health, education, and the like) management, agriculture, what is often referred to as the "3Ds" (dirty, demanding and dangerous jobs, such as cleaners, construction workers, etc.) and domestic help, entertainers, and more. The BTG has recommended several interventions to reduce trafficking risks. One of these recommendations is to support "awareness creation" among potential immigrants about both safe migration techniques and the risks of trafficking. The target audiences for awareness-raising include, local community leaders, decision makers, prospective migrants, etc. Some of the BTG proposed activities the WCSRC will support include, the distribution of easy-to-read and understand safe migration pamphlets; posters that highlight important information on safe migration; group orientations and one-to-one counseling on the subject; creation of migration referral centers that ensure migration opportunities are legitimate (these centers monitor sites, help with logistical arrangements and report any problems identified). This can be done at all levels of society by using targeted mass media, rallies, school-based programs, posters, community workshops, etc. The objective is to help people to understand what trafficking is and what can be done to stop it within their community. See, Revisiting the Human Trafficking Paradigm: The Bangladesh Experience Part I: Trafficking of Adults, BTG, IOM, ¶2004. Another recommendation by the Thematic Group is to further emphasize the importance of demand factors in understanding and combating the trafficking phenomenon. Human trafficking is driven by two basic factors: (1) the available supply of people who can be tricked, manipulated and/or forced into "slave-like situations" and (2) the demand created by those who use these people to fill a need for cheap, vulnerable and highly exploitative commercial sexual services and/or exploitative labor. Until recently, most reports related to the human trafficking sector have focused only on the supply side - the trafficked persons, their experiences, what happens to them, etc. In contrast to this, few studies have tried to address the question of "demand dynamics". Demand refers to those people/organizations/syndicates that create or influence an environment allowing the demand for exploitative commercial sexual services or exploitative labor to exist. See, Revisiting the Human Trafficking Paradigm: The Bangladesh Experience Part I: Trafficking of Adults, BTG, IOM, 2004. The strength of our Bangladesh proposal for capacity-building support rests on our ability to assist those organizations, which have been involved in the fight against human trafficking in Bangladesh for many years. ¶A. WCSRC - Dhaka Year 1 $75,500.00 Year 2 $72,500.00 Total Request $148,000.00 The WCSRC-Kathmandu has generated unique, critical returns in the fight against trafficking. By creating a neutral space for coordination between all local and international NGO's, Nepali law enforcement and other ministries of His Majesty's Government/Nepal, the WCSRC-Kathmandu has increased prosecutions and convictions, reduced duplication and the zero-sum, competitive climate among aid recipients in Nepal. Daywalka intends to create a WCSRC in Dhaka, which will provide the same energizing support to the Bangladeshi NGO counter human trafficking community. A WCSRC is a key information hub in a regional network to increase cooperation across South Asia. In partnership with IOM, Daywalka will build on its networks across South Asia and throughout the nations bordering the Bay of Bengal to combat trafficking in persons. Daywalka has laid a solid foundation for implementing scalable, cost-effective, culturally sound and sustainable trafficking solutions. Based on WCSRC-Katmandu's track record in fiscal 2003-2004, Daywalka partners strongly supported broadening our South Asian regional counter-trafficking network to Kolkata and Dhaka. WCSRC-Dhaka will become a cornerstone of this network. Requested funds include capacity building and operations costs for the center, as well as, computer, literacy and legal rights trainings of survivors and library and information outreach and development. Also included are computer and legal training for local NGO's. In cooperation with local IOM staff and other NGOs in Bangladesh, the new center will encourage victim re-training and reintegration programs. Small business training facilities in combination with microfinance will allow survivors to successfully open their own small businesses in Bangladesh. TDF will work in close partnership with IOM to improve outreach to victims of trafficking and to raise awareness of the dangers of trafficking in communities historically victimized by traffickers. TDF and IOM have joined to combine their working knowledge of South Asian Trafficking in the fight against trafficking. ¶B. Bangladesh Thematic Working Group Year 1 $8,000 Year 2 $6,000 Total $14,000 Daywalka and IOM have established a partnership for addressing regional trafficking concerns across South Asia. Based upon the recent success in Dhaka, Bangladesh, of the Bangladeshi Thematic Counter-Trafficking Working Group, there are now effective communication mechanisms in place for implementation and developing novel anti-trafficking activities. Daywalka is uniquely situated to facilitate this model in Bangladesh by recruiting an extremely talented and dedicated Bengali WCSRC Advisory Board. The advisory board will be comprised of the key players in counter-trafficking in Bangladesh including leaders of local NGOs, members of the Bangladesh Police, former governmental commissioners and judges and other leading figures in the counter-trafficking community. Daywalka and IOM will continue to establish and facilitate best practices trainings, manuals and national and regional workshops to address trafficking concerns in Bangladesh. ¶C. Bangladesh Women's Police Outreach (non law-enforcement activities) Year 1 $12,000 Year 2 $ 8,000 Total $20,000 While the government of Bangladesh has made limited strides in combating trafficking, continued economic instability and limited development have hampered a coordinated and comprehensive effort to address trafficking. As in other nations of South Asia, including India and Nepal, ongoing gaps in victim services include limited legal aid and inadequate psycho-social treatment. In general there is insufficient training of police officers regarding trafficking victim sensitization and support reaching to all levels of the police. In Nepal, Daywalka coordinates with the Women's Police Cell to provide urgently needed psycho-social counseling and victim support. IOM has the expertise of developing LEA training manuals in use in Bangladesh. IOM and Daywalka can also cooperate on victim reintegration plans and monitoring This project synergistically builds on other donors' counter trafficking efforts in Bangladesh. See Annex for donors and other organizations involved in the Bangladesh Thematic Group. With the development of this additional office space in Dhaka, Daywalka and IOM's many local partners can provide the much needed services to create safe and secure spaces for victims of trafficking. IOM plays a crucial role by providing experienced facilitators and trainers and assisting in the development and documentation of victim services best practices. ¶D. Monitoring and Assessment Year 1 $15,000 Year 2 $15,000 Total $30,000 Programmatic and fiscal monitoring of our proposed Bangladesh- based WCSRC and its constituent programs, will be undertaken by the IOM, through it offices in Dhaka. Daywalka will provide IOM with updates and keep in close contact with its field officers. Daywalka and IOM personnel will review the progress of anti- trafficking programs in consultation with our local NGO partners through regular progress reports, field visits which identify current objectives and timelines for project completion. The IOM Dhaka office and Washington will be monitoring the project activities. These ongoing evaluations ensure that the overall program will remain on schedule and that all of the participating stakeholders know what to expect and how to best participate to maximize the Center's demand and supply-side anti-trafficking responses. IOM Dhaka office can also support by monitoring the victim assistance program, training the police officials on `Psycho-social protection.' All MOUs Daywalka enters into with our local NGO partners require timely submission of local program reporting and auditing of all expenditures of program funds. Further, all Daywalka and local sub-grantee activities will be monitored in-country by Daywalka's country program director, whose efforts will be reviewed on a quarterly basis by our Chief Operations Officer. ¶E. Public Awareness and Capacity Building through Regional Database Development Year 1 $15,000.00 Year 2 $12,000.00 Total $27,000.00 For many years, reliable data on human trafficking has been hard to come by in South Asia, in part due to the inability or outright refusal of organizations to share information and procedures. Daywalka's present proposal builds on data collection efforts already underway regarding trafficking victims, support services required by then and trafficker profiles. Daywalka and its private full-time attorneys and investigators have already collected useful and accurate trafficking data and compilation and development of an efficient powerful database has begun. Additional development of communication and information networking resources is required in order to realize the full potential of this project. As we proceed local and national databases, with information from across South Asia will be amalgamated into a fully-functional regional counter-trafficking database containing adequate operational information about traffickers and their procedures to allow large network-wide prosecutions. Additionally, Daywalka is developing databases which track all prosecutions and arrests and a survivor database to assess the scope of the problem and centralize survivor assistance information. ¶V. Justification The transnational dimensions of trafficking require a multinational response. WCSRC partnerships, communication and workshops locate local concerns in the broader regional context. Our developing network of information hubs is scalable, effective and reproducible across South Asia. The accelerated number of prosecutions in Nepal resulting from the strong partnership between IOM and Daywalka demonstrate that collaboration must exist between counter-trafficking groups if we are to develop and implement effective solutions to human trafficking. We intend to replicate this outcome in Bangladesh. Both the TIP report and Ambassador Miller's recent post-tsunami call for increased vigilance against trafficking underscore the importance of a regional collaborative effort in South and Southeast Asia. VI. Performance Indicators Performance is measured in part by further evidence of collaboration between local groups and by ongoing joint projects and policy development. Increase in support services will be qualitatively recorded by interviewing service providers and recipients. Additionally, number of police officers, service workers, government officials, and specifically lawyers trained will yield numbers for performance evaluation. Further, an increase in the number of successful prosecutions and the ability of local groups to render legal advice and access to the legal process to survivors of trafficking will be measured. Evaluation Plan Ongoing assessment is central to Daywalka's strategy to maximize the relevance and benefits of the WCSRC model. Our programs are built around counsel from prominent research institutions and results-driven philanthropists to continuously measure impact. Methodological Concerns The Daywalka Foundation is steeped in qualitative approaches to research and evaluation, particularly employing the ethnographic method to achieve our program goals. Qualitative methods focus on gathering in-depth information about a population through detailed interviews with selected knowledgeable community leaders and other members and focus on the following evaluation themes: ¶1. identify and understand the beneficiary population's overal priorities for action and their ranking of different progra activities; ¶2. identify and understand the beneficiary population's specific priorities within a specific sector; ¶3. identify and understand the underlying reasons for problems before developing solutions; ¶4. identify and understand the beneficiary population's language, concepts and beliefs surrounding specific behaviors/situations targeted for change; and, ¶5. assess stakeholder reactions to our programs to adapt implementation and evaluate (subjectively) the immediate ef of our program. Daywalka continuously surveys our local NGO partners to develop the most effective and powerful response to human trafficking VII. Budget Break-Out (summary) Year 1 Year 2 Project Total WCSRC-Dhaka $79,500.00 $78,500.00 $158,000.00* Thematic Working Group $8,000.00 $6,000.00 $14,000.00 Bangladesh Women's Police Outreach $12,000.00 $8,000.00 $20,000.00 Monitoring & Assessment $15,000.00 $15,000.00 $30,000.00 Public Awareness and Capacity Building through Regional Database Development $15,000.00 $12,000.00 $27,000.00 Indirect Costs (staff support and operations) $25,900.00 $23,900.00 $49,800.00 TOTALS $155,400.00 $143,400.00 $299,800.00 * This total includes funding for local partners ($47,000) VIII. Host Government Contribution and other cost-sharing arrangement IOM has agreed to cost share with office space and utilities. IX. Other Donors These funds are subject to a matching grant from the James R Greenbaum Jr., Family Foundation LIST OF REPRESENTING ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED IN DEVELOPING THE ADULT PARADIGM OF THE BTG (in alphabetical order) DONOR AND UN AGENCIES Asian Development Bank (ADB) AusAid Australian High Commission Canadian International Development Agency - Programme Support Unit (CIDA- PSU) Canadian High Commission Department for International Development (DFID) European Union (EU) International Labour Organization (ILO) International Organization for Migration (IOM) Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) Royal Norwegian Embassy United States Agency for International Development (USAID/Bangladesh) United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) INTERNATIONAL NGOs Action Aid Bangladesh Association for Participation in Development (APS) Care Bangladesh Caritas Bangladesh Canadian Resource Team Family Health International (FHI) Save the Children Denmark Save the Children Alliance The Asia Foundation The British Council NATIONAL/LOCAL NGOs Ain-O-Salish Kendra Aparajeo Bangladesh ATSEC Bangladesh Chapter Association for Community Development (ACD) Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA) Bangladesh Center for Communication Programs (BCCP) Bagladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum (BSAF) Bangladesh Manabadhikar Sangbadik Forum Change Makers Center for Women and Child Development (CWCD) Centre for Women and Children Studies (CWCS) Dhaka Ahasania Mission INCIDIN Bangladesh Jesh Foundation Nari Unnayan Shakti Population Council Queens University Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) Rights Jessore SHISUK GOVERNMENT AGENCIES Bangladesh Police (Headquarters) Ministry of Home Affairs Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Women and Children Affairs The Government Coordinated Program to Combat Child Trafficking (CPCCT) and news agencies END TEXT CHAMMAS