Brave Bear Trust

It’s that time of year when some of us are buying gifts🎅🎄 But if you are worried about your consumption during the festive season, check out our tips for finding gifts that are low impact on the world and high impact for your loved ones! 🎁

Swipe to see our festive take on the sustainable/ethical shopping pyramid. Consider the bottom of the tree — where it’s at its widest — as the first port of call for gift giving, with other ideas getting slightly less and less sustainable as the tree narrows towards the top.

1. Non-physical gifts 🎟️ 🎭 Why not gift someone tickets to an event or a workshop, or a donation in their name to a charitable cause?

2. Home-made gifts 🧶 🕯️ What better way to show your love someone than by spending time making something? You could try knitting a scarf, crafting a tree decoration or making candles

3. Second-hand gifts 👗 🧩 From Vestiaire to Vinted, or the good old local charity shop, there should be plenty of places to find inspiration

4. Ethical gifts 🧸🛍️ If you do buy something new, spend time researching where you are buying it from. See if you can find any small local businesses to support, look into whether the company has published any information about its supply chain, or check out brands on the website to see how they are ranked when it comes to sustainability

Please share our call out request for Arabic readers to read our Arabic translation our brave Bear resources. For anyone who can help give us feedback on our newest translation, please email [email protected]

18th October is Anti-Slavery Day.

At the Brave Bear Trust, we are doing our bit in the fight against slavery with our book and resources for children, which we use to engage, educate, empower and equip children to know how to keep themselves and others safe from exploitation.

Though the book was originally only in English, we now have many translations - Welsh, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, and now Arabic! Our Arabic version will be circulated in Egypt initially, but our hope is that it will become more widespread in the Arabic speaking community, supporting our vision to keep children everywhere safe form exploitation.

However, on this day, we celebrate our partners in this field who are working to fight slavery all over the world. Check out the following organisations and learn about what they are doing this Anti-Slavery Day:

Our spotlight this month is on our Russian translation! In addition to Spanish and Ukrainian, Brave has been translated into Russian. 🌎 The completed Russian version is still in development, but our hope is that it will be used to educate and empower Russian speakers including displaced children who are in Ukraine and elsewhere, to keep them safe from exploitation. 💛

The US government’s Trafficking in Person’s report states that conflict in the region has created populations that are highly vulnerable to trafficking. Forcible transfer of thousands of children, including by forcibly separating some children from parental figures, greatly increased the separated children’s vulnerability to trafficking. Moreover, the war created millions of refugees fleeing Ukraine, as well as those internally displaced, all of whom were highly vulnerable to trafficking. The scale and scope of such conduct raise real and serious concerns regarding significant potential risks of trafficking.

The report recommends that efforts are made to raise public awareness of both s*x and labor trafficking, including among children.

We will keep you posted on the progress of the Russian version of Brave! ♥️🧸

   

Our July spotlight has come a little later in the month than usual, since lots of exciting things have been happening for our comms team - new jobs, new homes, finished dissertations!

Nevertheless! This month our focus is on Ukraine 🇺🇦

We have spoken before about our development of our Ukrainian ‘Brave’ translation. A key reason for this development in 2022 was due to the ‘displacement of citizens due to war and conflict can leave people more susceptible to exploitation’ (IRC, 2022) and specifically when considering the war in Ukraine, there are increased risks of human trafficking and exploitation (Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, 2022).

We would love to use our Ukrainian translated resources and book in more places so please get in touch if you know where these copies will be able to make a positive impact! 🐻❤️

Recent snap relating to our June focus:

Our trustee Bryn says “It was great to be able to share a copy of Valiente (Spanish version of Brave) with the team who are excited to use the resource educating local children in the Dominican Republic to the risks of exploitation.” 🇩🇴

Thank you Bryn! 🐻❤️

Our Brave spotlight this month is on Egypt. Swipe to find out more about the current situation of trafficking and child exploitation in Egypt. 🇪🇬🇪🇬

It’s a sad situation and can be quite affronting to read about, but the fact that children are particularly vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation in Egypt is exactly why we wanted to talk about it this month. We have a partner organisation working with some of the most vulnerable children in slums and rural villages in Egypt, and we hope that one day we can use the Brave story to engage, educate, empower and equip children in Egypt to know how to keep themselves and others safe from exploitation.🧸 Children in this context don't have access to books to own or even borrow from a library so it would be even more special for them to receive a book and be able to call it their own💛❤️

Little update from earlier this month… 🇺🇬

Brave has been reviewed this month by professionals working in schools, day centres and community organisations across different locations and contexts in Uganda!

We are thankful for professionals such as social workers, teachers and managers, and are now looking forward to hearing from children through a pilot.

We are so encouraged to hear about the potential for Brave to help keep children safe in Uganda and we’ll keep you posted on our next steps. 🐻❤️

For our April spotlight, we wanted to share some information about Uganda! 🇺🇬

Our brand new Global English Brave books have recently been taken to Uganda to be reviewed by experts and professionals. so we wanted to shed some light on:
- the situation with child trafficking
- what the contextual risk factors are
- what is being done to combat this international issue. Swipe to find out more ➡️

We will be sharing some more specific info on where our books have been sent, and what the feedback has been, later on this month! 🐻❤️

(Feel free to check out our January focus: Thailand🇹🇭 , February focus: Kenya🇰🇪 , and our March focus: Albania🇦🇱 )

                        *xtraffickingawareness

Before the Easter holidays,  visited Herbert Morrison Primary School in Lambeth with Heather from our team at the  representing  and Kim Ann Williamson MBE, Civil Servant at the Cabinet Office and Chair of UK Modern Slavery Training.

We visited to raise awareness and deliver training on modern slavery to the education sector. We used our book ‘Brave’ to talk to a year 6 class about modern slavery in an age appropriate way. It was a privilege to meet the children at Herbert Morrison Primary and talk to them about how to keep themselves safe.

You can find out more about our ‘Brave’ book on our website (bravebeartrust.org) and our vision to keep children safe using education internationally.

Head over to  and  to see what they do!

               

Continuing on with our theme for this month, it’s time for an update on how 🇦🇱 Albania 🇦🇱 fits into the Brave story.

Brave went on his travels to Albania to meet with organisations and individuals working with children in the community. He spent time in a school and orphanage hearing from leaders and meeting children.

We are continuing our conversations to understand how ‘Brave’ can be translated and culturally adapted to help keep children safe from exploitation in Albania.

Last month our focus was on Kenya, and this month we are travelling all the way to Albania! 🇦🇱

Swipe through to find out more about the situation of human trafficking and exploitation in Albania.

Did you spot Brave at Tirana airport? 🐻 Watch this space to find out more later in the month about what Brave got up to on his recent trip to Albania.

*xtraffickingawareness