Edmund Rice schools

March 16, 2018: Question Time at St Mary’s College, Crosby

This event had students from seven schools who presented questions to a panel comprising:

  • Mark Wiggin, Director, Caritas Salford (Chairman)
  • Mick Duthie, Director, Santa Marta Group
  • Detective Chief Inspector Mark Vaughton, Head of Human Trafficking, East L ancashire Police
  • Sion Hall, Head of the Lancashire Anti-Trafficking Partnership
  • Sam Baxendale, North West Regional Manager for the Medaille Trust

At the end of he session each of the seven schools presented their ideas for future action in their schools.  Ideas included:

  • Engage the Head of Year or School Chaplain
  • Use assemblies to raise awareness
  • Show a video
  • Raise money/run an appeal for a charity e.g. the Medaille Trust
  • Organise a sponsored walk
  • Raise awareness by selling badges e.g. Green Heart badge
  • Link with asylum advocacy in the next United Nations, Universal Periodic Review
  • Raise awareness via  Students Services
  • Use notice boards to display information on the signs of human trafficking plus ‘phone numbers to ring
  • Get the message to lower years starting with refugees and moving onto trafficking)

In their final summaries the panellists made the points:

  • The interest and enthusiasm of the students was impressive
  • There was an encouraging level of knowledge of human trafficking amongst the students
  • Students were urged to keep the conversation going with friends and networks
  • There is a lot of information to access and learn from. Students should do everything they can within their circles of interest
  • Five years ago one wouldn’t have envisaged anything like this event and this level of awareness. Where will be in five years time?
  • The students were absolutely right to suggest awareness raising with younger pupils
  • You only have one chance to save a life – and that chance may lie in your hands

We now have a Schools Question Time Panel Format for similar events in the future

November 10 2017: Advocacy Day, Edmund Rice sixth formers, Hale Barns

The Advocacy Day was attended by students from Edmund Rice secondary schools of which there are four in the North of England, one in Altrincham and three in Merseyside.  Anthony Brown spoke about the work of the Medaille Trust and Caritas Salford, and presented possible ideas for the students to raise in their schools – e.g lobbying, desk research, social media.  What took their attention most was the Question Time event we had in Clitheroe (see 23 October 2015) and we agreed to hold a similar event for students in Crosby in March 2018.

August 30 2017: Meeting with Tom Murray, Youth Development Officer with Edmund Rice Office, Christian Brothers, Altrincham

Tom was referred to us by Brother Jim Catterson whom we met on May 15.

Tom told us about the Edmund Rice work with the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) which is a unique mechanism of the Human Rights Council (HRC) aimed at improving the human rights situation on the ground of each of the 193 United Nations (UN) Member States.

Edmund Rice have put forward proposals on homelessness, food poverty and asylum seekers and we talked about adding human trafficking to the list.  Once accepted it would have to be implemented and the monitoring process is there to ensure that it is.

We also talked about trafficking input to Edmund Rice schools and agreed to meet again on 10 November.

May 15 2017: Meeting with Brother Jim Catterson of the Christian Brothers, st Sabastian’s Presbytery, Salford.

Brother Jim was one of the people who attended our February 7 Human Trafficking conference and wanted to learn more about what we do and how the Christian Brothers might become involved.

We briefed Brother Jim on the subject of human trafficking and what we were doing and agreed to meet one of the teachers at a later date to see how we might work with the Christian Brothers.