ABOUT

Ruhama (NGO) was awarded Dormant Accounts Funding (2018-2019) from the Irish government to develop support materials for the Romanian community in Ireland who may be vulnerable to sexual exploitation and/or trafficking.

In my role at Ruhama, I’m the Communications Lead for the project. The first step in making this project a success was to analyse the typical profile of a Romanian woman in Ireland and her trajectory in arriving here. Alongside our Romanian caseworker, we analysed cases of Romanian women who sought support from Ruhama, establishing their common route of entry to the sex trade (sex trafficking, poverty, prostitution etc) and their experience within the industry. We created a typical psychological profile of a Romanian woman in this situation, by analysing interactions between the casework team and those who sought support, identifying any reasons for or signs of disengaging with our service. I wrote a manual entitled ‘Creating supports to talk to a Romanian woman in the sex trade in Ireland’ based off our analysis.

The next step involved creating a design for flyers/posters/business cards that would resonate with Romanian women, to increase referrals to Ruhama for support services. Based off our original analysis and to effectively communicate with Romanian women, I had to divert from the language and imagery we would usually use in our support materials. I made strategic decisions surrounding the language we would use, the imagery and the format within the projected dates and in a timely fashion. I also created Google and Facebook ads to compliment the project and in similar style.