Two years ago, software giant Microsoft’s Philippine offices invested in victims of human trafficking by teaming up with nongovernment organization (NGO) Visayan Forum Foundation to provide skills and technical training for young girls rescued from human traffickers—and it was an investment that has paid off in many ways.

Michael Rawding Microsoft vice president for products and solutions management, partners, business development and field execution for the firm’s Unlimited Potential group visited the Visayan Forum safe house in Cubao, Quezon City, last week and met with the beneficiaries of the Stop Trafficking and Exploitation of People through Unlimited Potential (STEP UP) for the first time and was surprised and pleased with the reach and impact of the program.

“This is fantastic and overwhelming,” Rawding said, as he and other Microsoft personnel interacted with the Visayan Forum’s wards—mostly preteens and teenagers who had been victims of human trafficking. “These girls have survived from so much—forced labor and abuse—yet, they can now able to look forward to the future. This is amazing. It feels so great to be a part of this endeavor.”

Since 2006 the Visayan Forum Foundation has rescued over 8,000 victims of human trafficking. As the Microsoft personnel arrived at the Cubao safe house, the foundation was in the process of organizing yet another rescue mission, this time for 30 more victims. Visayan Forum president and executive director Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda credited this high rescue rate to the STEP UP program’s support for their efforts. She said the Microsoft program acted as a catalyst and “convergence point where other corporate social responsibility [CSR] programs joined our effort to stop human trafficking, rescue its victims and, most important, help us rehabilitate and train our [rescued] wards for reintegration into society as productive citizens.”

STEP UP program graduates are given access to the job market as secretaries, layout and graphic artists, computer-literate staff workers and assistants with the help of Manpower Inc., a global employment- services provider with a strong CSR focus on combating exploitative employment practices and human trafficking.

Because many of the foundation’s wards have to live in the safe house for two to three years while the cases filed against their exploiters are under trial, the Visayan Forum uses this time to provide life skills and livelihood training, with the STEP UP program a central component.

Using the training and certification provided by Microsoft, the Visayan Forum wards create artwork and inspirational messages that are printed on greeting cards, mugs and clocks that the foundation sells to generate funds. The girls also sew cushions and throw -pillows and adorn rubber slippers which are sold for them, as well.

This month, the foundation’s wards will start creating jewelry designed by renowned local designers. These will be sold in the Philippines, as well as overseas, according to Oebanda.

Visayan Forum volunteers said all communication between the jewelry designers and even the transmission of design specifications and photos will be computer-assisted, using the lessons taught under the STEP UP program.

“Microsoft’s support, through the STEP UP program, for our efforts to combat human trafficking and ensure that the girls we rescue have a chance to have a good future, has created a ripple effect that empowers us to do more,” Oebanda said. “It helped us get our point across that, if we want to stop human trafficking across Philippine borders, we have to stop human trafficking within our borders first, and that rescue is only part of the effort. The biggest challenge is making sure that these girls we rescue are taught life skills and trained so they can find work once they are reintegrated into the society.”

Courses offered under the STEP UP program include life skills, computer fundamentals and digital media, Internet, word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database and web design fundamentals that give them a good skill-set base for work in an IT environment.

Oebanda said the STEP UP program is “complementary to all efforts in anti-trafficking programs” including “preventive and protective” measures against trafficking and exploitation. It has also “mobilized non-traditional partners, such as faith-based groups, schools and business partners with strong CSR (programs) to implement and replicate the project (in over 12 self-sustaining centers nationwide)” and “enhanced (our) life skills training.”

Going beyond rescuing victims of trafficking, now that STEP UP is in its second year, the program is now moving into “preventive” action by building Community Technology Learning Centers (CTLCs) for women and youths identified as vulnerable to human trafficking.

These training centers are managed and run by local program partners in identified human trafficking “hot spots” to reach out to and develop IT skills in the women and youths in these areas. Alongside the skills training, the people whom these centers serve are given “relevant orientations” on the issue of human trafficking to discourage potential trafficking victims from going with unscrupulous “recruiters.”

“We are working to stop human trafficking in the Philippines,” Oebanda said. “Until we are successful at that endeavor, we are working to make human trafficking as unprofitable and difficult for traffickers as possible.”

Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential group “is charged with spearheading efforts to close the digital divide by creating new products and programs that will help bring social and economic opportunity to the estimated five billion people not yet realizing the benefits of technology.”

Rawdings puts it this way: “We are taking technology to underserved communities worldwide and using it to each community’s maximum benefit—whether these are students, the impoverished or communities like the Visayan Forum, because we believe that there is a lot of good we can do with the technology we have.”

Through the expansion of the Unlimited Potential program, Microsoft “is renewing and accelerating its long-term commitment to use technology, training and partnerships to transform education, foster local innovation, and enable jobs and opportunities to sustain a continuous cycle of social and economic growth for everyone,” Microsoft said.

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Two years ago, software giant Microsoft’s Philippine offices invested in victims of human trafficking by teaming up with nongovernment organization (NGO) Visayan Forum Foundation to provide skills and technical training for young girls rescued from human traffickers—and it was an investment that has paid off in many ways.

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