Big news: A prestigious European funding body is to help us protect young people from sexual exploitation

Protecting women and young people from sexual exploitation is one of the greatest challenges we face at The New Futures Project and as a society.

So, we were delighted to learn that a major European funding body has agreed to make a significant donation to our work in this difficult field.

The award – we’re just waiting to hear the exact sum, but it’s approximately 45,000 Euros – comes from the King Baudouin Foundation, a Belgian organisation which is dedicated to tackling disadvantage wherever it exists.

Our experience over the past 20 years tells us many of the young people who are or who are at risk of being sexually exploited are carrying the trauma of childhood experiences of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, family breakdown, domestic violence or incest.

Many spent their early years in care or were affected by neglect in the home.

Such factors leave teenagers and young adults vulnerable to sexual grooming online or in person by abusers, including parents and other relatives, partners or carers.

Some are particularly isolated because they are victims of human trafficking or have been drawn into ‘county lines’ drug dealing.

Meanwhile, the impact of Leicester’s extended lockdown during the coronavirus crisis and a lack of job opportunities have also left their mark on these young lives.

The King Baudouin Foundation grant will ensure we can employ a part-time qualified counselling assessor who will establish what our team of counsellors needs to do to offer the best support to each client.

This also means we will be able to recruit another 15 to 20 volunteer/student counsellors, potentially enabling us to provide therapeutic support to a minimum of 60 and a maximum of 100 additional clients in this area.

It will mean we will be able to tackle our waiting list of approximately 50 clients and keep pace with the growing demand for this service.

To illustrate the scale of this work, we currently receive between five and 10 referrals per week.

In each person’s case, we will provide a personalised package of intensive, long-term practical, emotional and therapeutic support to ensure they are able to recover from historic abuse and trauma and make improvements to their day-to-day lives.

Perhaps more importantly, we want to support the women we work with to achieve generational change – so they can be the person who breaks the cycle and changes the lives of the subsequent generations.

New Futures Project director Della Kagure Brown said: “We are extremely grateful for this award from such a prestigious organisation.

“It will make a huge difference to young women who are living in desperate conditions.

“It’s also good to hear that our work is being recognised not only in the UK, but in Europe as well.

“Again, we’d like to thank the foundation for their generous support for this important work.”

We are looking particularly at clients aged 13 to 25 and from two of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the city and beyond – St Matthews and Highfields.

New Futures was set up to support women involved in sex work.

However, we have evolved into a comprehensive welfare and counselling service for women and young people dealing with sexual abuse or exploitation, domestic violence, trafficking, poverty and debt, substance use or mental ill-health.

Call us on 0116 251 0803 or send us a message at: info@new-futures.org.uk

You can find us at 71 London Road, Leicester, LE2 0PE.

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