It can be tough to leave home for an extended period of time, but after six months in West Africa, it was harder for Elyssa Shroeder to return stateside. The fifth-year Ph. Schroeder was recently hired as the Director of Survivor Engagement at CenHTRO, overseeing all implementation projects related to the care, research, and support of victims and survivors.
Shroeder spent most of her time in Sierra Leone with World Hope International , a nonprofit organization that oversees clean water, global health and protection initiatives across the globe. Shroeder invested much of the past three years in building and strengthening relationships with social workers and other care providers via zoom and an in-person meeting, creating a rapport to complete her community-based participatory project.
However, the child is often forced into agriculture, fishing, mining, domestic work or other child labor, and in some cases early marriage or sex trafficking. Shroeder spoke with social workers, counselors and other staff, studying data sets from multiple years to complete her findings.
World Hope International stores data in multi-year files, so Shroeder dissected available, de-identified data from six fiscal years and now awaits future data.
During her stay, she led training, consultations and staff retreats, meeting the needs of not only the victims of trafficking but also providers. She continues to work with the staff to improve documentation processes, digitizing the format the nonprofit previously used.
