Life in rural Sierra Leone offers few economic opportunities to parents like Baindu Momoh and even fewer to her children. Surviving through subsistence farming and small-scale trading, Baindu has struggled to feed and educate her daughter.

So when a distant relative living in a larger town offered to take Baindu’s daughter into her home and send her to school, Baindu felt relief. It was an opportunity for her child to secure a future and one fewer hungry belly for her to worry over. 

But solace soon turned to dread. Instead of attending school, the girl was forced into domestic servitude. She suffered beatings when she protested her treatment.

Informal fostering situations, in which a child lives apart from their biological parents, are common across Africa and have helped generations of children attend school and escape extreme poverty. 

But bad actors abuse the tradition, meaning children wind up being forced to work in agriculture or cleaning houses when they should be learning math and science.

When Baindu’s daughter mustered the courage to escape, she began a long walk back to her mother’s village, a roughly 30-minute car ride away down unpaved roads. Along the way, village leaders noticed the young girl walking alone and inquired about her condition. Having been trained to identify and respond to human trafficking by CenHTRO and WHI, the villagers notified local authorities. Cared for in a trauma-informed facility run by CenHTRO’s partner, the girl and her mother would soon find a path to healing.

To help recover from her experiences, Baindu’s daughter was taken to WHI’s Recovery Centre. Social workers trained in trauma-informed practices cared for the girl. Baindu met with her daughter at the shelter. Counseled by therapists, they prepared to return home. As CenHTRO’s research noted that poor families required additional post-trafficking support, the family received school supplies and food. Baindu received income-generating support, meaning social workers helped her buy goods to sell at her local market. This small amount of help, Baindu said, relieved the economic pressure on her family.

Today, Baindu’s daughter is attending school and doing well.