Moldovan helps trafficking victims with hotline work
Victoria is a psychologist by profession and an optimist by nature - and somebody who discovered that helping others can change her life for the better, too.
In 2003, she quit her job as an English teacher and began volunteering for La Strada's Anti-Trafficking hotline in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova.
"Trafficking is a horrible thing. Four years ago everybody knew that trafficking existed, but people were not really informed and did not recognize traffickers' traps and schemes. I felt I could help," Victoria remembers.
Victoria and her two colleagues at the hotline help to prevent trafficking and assist victims. Since its launch in 2001, the La Strada Hotline has received 23,000 calls, of which three-quarters involve trafficking prevention.
"Potential migrants or their relatives ask us for advice and we alert them to possible dangers and how to avoid them," Victoria says. "The remaining phone calls are mostly requests for social assistance for trafficking victims. In those cases, we link them up with our resource centre, which takes care of each case individually.
Making a difference
Today, Victoria works not only as a full-time consultant at the hotline, but also trains students and young professionals as prevention workers and hotline consultants. She has no regrets about joining La Strada.
"These are real cases. You feel that you can help people, that you can save lives," she says and shares one of her first experiences.
"A victim called our hotline in the middle of the night and asked me: 'Should I run away or should I stay?' There was no time to think, no one to consult and I realized that my advice could decide this young woman's fate."
Victoria advised the victim not to run away but to stay and wait for help. A colleague from the resource centre next door immediately contacted La Strada's partners who freed the woman within a day and repatriated her to Moldova.
"In moments like this, when we hear that we helped someone to escape their traffickers, all the stress just vanishes," she says.
And stress there is. The daily conversations with desperate victims or mothers who miss their children are not easy for Victoria and her colleagues.
"But we have a great team and support each other in difficult times," she says.
Important work to do
Victoria is also happy that she found meaningful work in her home country - today regarded as the poorest in Europe. While many Moldovans have gone abroad in search of a better future, Victoria has stayed. Her motivation is not only to work on her future in Moldova, but also on the future of her country.
"I am an optimist," she says. "I am convinced that Moldova has a brighter future. Our generation has new ideas and is creative - we could make something out of our country."
But she also points directly to one of Moldova's biggest problems. From her work and personal experience she knows that many of those innovative and creative young Moldovans who go abroad to work or study don't come back.
"Many young people leave because the economic potential here is so weak. But we need them, their skills and the experience they have acquired abroad."
Her solution to this dilemma is straightforward: "We need more career opportunities for young people."