Providing Vital Education to Students
When Father Penes, along with other local priests, attended one of IOCC’s anti-trafficking workshops, he grew increasingly concerned about children from his rural village in Romania. He knew many of them could be easy prey for human traffickers, especially when they headed off to high school in a neighboring large city.
So, Father Penes began organizing small educational meetings in his church, alerting young people to the signs of human trafficking and showing them how to stay safe. Encouraged by the response, he applied for a grant from IOCC to start a larger anti-trafficking education program in the Prahova region. It was a natural extension of IOCC’s anti-trafficking effort, in partnership with Federation Filantropia and Romania’s National Agency Against Human Traffic, which began in 2022, shortly after Ukrainian refugees began flooding into Romania.
With IOCC’s support, Father Penes was able to organize more sessions at local elementary and middle schools, along with his parish, reaching more than 300 young people. The students listened and took the information to heart, knowing they would soon leave their village to attend high school. After one of Father Penes’ sessions, one girl admitted, “I didn’t know how dangerous it could be.”
And today, even though he is keenly aware of the dangers facing young people, Father Penes is confident these information sessions are making a difference and helping them to make safe, smart decisions.
