Our Theory of Change is a blueprint of the building blocks required to achieve Good Deeds International's long-term goal to reduce child-trafficking. With it we identify the issue(s) the organization will address, the participants involved, the target audience, the context in which the program will take place, and the strategies that will be enacted to achieve specific outcomes.

 In other words, our theory of change identifies:

• What actions
• In what setting
• With what people
• Producing what outcomes

Good Deeds International’s (GDI) mission is to reduce transgenerational child labour practices in developing countries. This means empowering and educating child labourers so their children and their children’s children are not caught in a web of slavery and exploitation. 

What actions?

Good Deeds International’s current focus is on child-trafficking reduction.

We build bold, educational and inspirational campaigns that attract international advocates and financial support for our grassroots anti-trafficking schools which empower and nurture the educational development of child-trafficking victims or those at risk to it. 

Our schools are state-of-the-art facilities training the new millennium’s Expert
Counter Child-Trafficking Practitioners.

We recruit and train diverse, highly selective cohorts of child-trafficking victims or those at risk to it—individuals of all ethnic backgrounds, with personal goals of eradicating child-trafficking—who commit several years to becoming skilled in child-trafficking reduction, prevention and intervention techniques and methodologies. These students later implement counter trafficking programs and teach in at-risk communities. Our students become lifelong visionary leaders in pursuit of trafficking reduction excellence and equity. During their formal training years, counter trafficking students go above and beyond traditional expectations to ensure that future communities and children they work with in at-risk areas have the opportunities for dignity and freedom that every child deserves. At the same time, the counter trafficking students themselves gain the conviction and insight necessary to be lifelong visionary leaders for fundamental change and equitable and just social transformation.

In what setting?

Why does child-trafficking at the grass-roots level exist?

At a broad level, socioeconomic forces like poverty and discrimination are driving vulnerable youth into the darkest cracks of human exploitation.  Lack of access to basic necessities (food, water, shelter), education, jobs, and gender and racial prejudice put added pressure on youth and families that don’t have access to local economic and social structures to compensate.

Criminal networks are exploiting these environments and social problems.

Due in large part to the sophistication of local and international criminal activities, over 1.5 million children worldwide are trafficked into a life of slavery and exploitation (with numbers on the rise). As trafficking is primarily a hidden criminal activity, not only is there lack of research and awareness on trafficking in the international community, but a lack of structured and strategic counter-trafficking initiatives exist at local levels.

We feel child-trafficking victims and those at risk to trafficking are in the best position to create needed change at the local level. For example, all victims and those at risk to trafficking have firsthand experiences and proximity to the realm of trafficking, thus making them experts by default and appropriate vehicles for social transformation. As such, our counter trafficking students are in a unique position to lead the counter trafficking movement at the grassroots level. At present, many former child slaves are not considered for the role of Changemaker in their own communities.

We feel that needs to change.

With what people?

Our innovative campaigns and international advocate networks strategically work together to support and nurture Good Deeds Counter Child-Trafficking Practitioners who themselves will lead the core battle against traffickers in their own neighbourhoods. 

We believe an elite, networked, highly trained, well-educated and passionate group of trafficking practitioners dealing with problems “in their own backyard” are in the best position to combat evolving trafficking challenges at the grass roots levels, such as:

• Constantly mutating structured and unstructured criminal activity
• Sophisticated criminal networks not constrained by laws and ethics
• Thugs preying on the disadvantaged and poor 
• Lack of anti-trafficking prevention and intervention
• Poverty and discrimination 

To overcome these underlying challenges in the short-term, we need as many counter trafficking practitioners networking and challenging the might of criminal networks to ensure vulnerable children are not sold into a life of slavery and exploitation. Prevention is key.  But hundreds and even thousands of dedicated counter trafficking practitioners cannot solve the trafficking problem on their own. A myriad of strategies and support structures must nurture the evolution of our schools, our students and the passionate professionals who emerge from them.

Producing what outcomes?

Good Deeds believes two solutions rise above the rest:

First, we need long-term, sustained networks and leadership in our schools, both at the teaching and learning levels. Through grassroots counter trafficking networks we will recruit students and powerful leadership and keep students in school and on the road to developing expertise in trafficking reduction. The key to our success is that we educate students that have a vested interest in combating trafficking, due to their personal experiences with it.

Second, we believe we must change the prevailing ideology around the possibility of eradicating child-trafficking. It will be a difficult task, but one we believe we can achieve. This entails moving from a world where most people believe trafficking is a sad but unavoidable problem, to one where it is commonly understood that we can solve this problem if we engage in direct action by making the right societal choices.

This means exponentially multiplying the amount of counter trafficking advocates worldwide.

Good Deeds International makes a long-term, fundamental impact by leveraging these two key ingredients for positive change and social transformation. The experience of learning from our counter trafficking schools and then teaching and implementing counter trafficking programs in at-risk communities is a transformative one for our students.

Our schools inform, influence and capitalize on personal passion, capacity and strengths needed to combat traffickers at the local levels. Good Deeds has thus built and empowered a new leadership force for positive social change from within the very communities in which the problems exist. This is a leadership force that has the passion, cultural understanding, perspective and moral authority to challenge the unethical systems and people who engage in the buying and selling of children.

At the same time, Good Deeds International links our alumni to international advocates, skilled volunteers, social financial investors, teachers, students, and business and government, for sustained support of the men and women doing battle on the ground. This support network is established and bolstered by our local and international campaigns, which are bold, educational and inspirational.

Together, each stakeholder assumes positions of influence ranging from financial support, advocacy, teaching and learning, volunteerism, philanthropy, and direct action—all of which combined have the potential to change the conversation about child-trafficking. 

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