Our Story
We prevent trafficking at the source.
Hope Education Project equips young people and their communities in Northern Ghana to recognise risk, resist recruitment and protect one another.
Human trafficking in Ghana affects girls and boys, women and men, from every age group, family background and economic circumstance. Poverty, limited schooling, family breakdown and the promise of money and status make recruitment easier. The ECOWAS agreement and easily obtainable visas for Gulf states have made it easier to move people out of the region.
Most people who are recruited do not see it coming. The offer arrives from someone they know and trust. Young people who can recognise the signs, and the adults around them who know how to respond, are harder to recruit. That is the work HEP does.
HEP is survivor-led and based in Tamale, in the Northern Region of Ghana. We work through schools and communities, before harm takes hold.
Our story began in Dubai
In 2019, a young Nigerian woman approached HEP founder Angus Thomas in a supermarket in Dubai. She was frightened and hungry. When she arrived in the United Arab Emirates, her passport was taken and replaced with a fake. She was told she had to earn $10,000 to repay a debt to the people who had trafficked her. She had been trafficked to Dubai for sexual exploitation, and she was being held with 22 other victims across two locations in the Deira area of the city.
Angus rescued and repatriated her. The BBC interviewed him, and the coverage let him crowdfund the project and rescue the other victims. That work led to the creation of Stop Trafficking Africa, previously the Send Them Home campaign.
The rescues exposed how the system works. Recruiters were often pastors, friends and relatives. Corrupt border, consular and police officials helped the traffickers. The media attention and the rescue missions led to a number of criminal prosecutions taken up by NAPTIP in Nigeria. It also became clear that a steady stream of West African victims was being trafficked to Dubai, and that the problem had to be tackled at the source.
Hope Education Project was founded on that conclusion. We educate vulnerable young people, their families, educators and community leaders in Ghana so that recruitment fails before it starts, and we work with survivors and partners to build prevention practice that others can use.
BBC South Interview
BBC South interview us for the Stop Trafficking Africa campaign
The Victoria Derbyshire Show
Victoria Derbyshire discusses sex trafficking to Dubai on the Victoria Derbyshire Show on BBC 2 for the Stop Trafficking Africa
Plus TV Africa News, Nigeria
We spoke to Amaka Okoye of Plus TV Africa News about our campaign to rescue and repatriate Nigerian women trafficked to Dubai for sexual exploitation
In November and December 2023, Stop Trafficking Africa held an immersive human trafficking exhibition in Soho, London. Dr Fatima Waziri-Azi, Director General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Nigeria, opened it.
The centrepiece was a video of testimony from survivors of trafficking to Dubai for sexual exploitation. It was shot in London, Lagos, Warri and Abuja, and features Dr Waziri-Azi and Stop Trafficking Africa founder Angus Thomas. It has had more than 3.5 million views across all formats and is used in training and education programs around the world.
Angus received a NAPTIP Award in 2023 for services to anti-trafficking.
Go to the Stop Trafficking Africa website