Maxwell Matewele on Monday donated books to Likuni girls secondary school in Lilongwe.
Matewele who is the National project officer on trafficking in persons for United Nations office on drugs and crime donates the books to girls titled “Human Trafficking in Malawi.”
According to Matewele, the books will help the girls a lot in the way that in the books there are different stories which talks more about trafficking.
“Human traffickers always target young people because they are vulnerable and because of their age and normally they take advantage of young people because they are not aware about these issues of human trafficking and the means that traffickers use to recruit these young people and that’s why I have divided to donate these books to the girls so that they may knowledge about human trafficking and how its happens”, said Matewele.
Matewele also noted that there is high demand of the traffickers for victims that could be used as sex workers , drug carriers, for organ removal and therefore it is very important to act beyond the thinking and approaches of the traffickers and that can be done by reaching out to the grassroot, by engaging the young people themselves informing them about these issues of human trafficking.
“The books explain and educate about human trafficking, how it happens in terms of the recruitment, transportation and what happens at the end of the whole process in terms of exploitation,”
“So we want young people to be informed so that if they are approached by the traffickers they must say no my life is more precious and I can never subject myself to traffickers just because I am poor . I am a young person so a well informed society will be in the better position to respond these issues of human trafficking”said Matewele.
According to Matewele he want to see members of the public participate in distribution , printing of the book because he really want the book to reach to many young people in Malawi.
“What we are doing is to appeal to well wishers to buy copies of this book and donate them to secondary schools , so we really want to see that the money that will be able to get from the book that people are buying and donating to schools,” he said.
In her remarks, one of the teachers at Likuni Girls Secondary School Mary Njewe said she is very happy with the donation .
She expressed the excitement for Likuni being the first school to receive the donation.
“I would like to thank them and we really appreciate for this gesture. We are appealing for them to come back next time so that we can have more of the motivation talks much as we are fighting for the girls. It has been hard to take care of these girls but because of the motivation talks life will become easier to us as well”, said Njewe.
Maxwell Matewele is expected to donate the books in many schools in Malawi with the aim of preventing young people from traffickers.
