Around 19 organisations, including Terre des hommes Foundation and Save the Children Romania built a solid partnership and joined forces in January 2013 to provide more effective intervention and advocacy for Central and South Eastern European (C/SEE) migrant children at risk of exploitation and trafficking. This initiative is a best practice initiative, spotting potential improvements in the migration journey.

The project Mario is co-funded by the European Union’s Daphne III Programme as well as the Oak Foundation. It aims at improving the level of protection of C/SEE migrant children who are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and/or trafficking, having a specific focus on the accessibility, inclusiveness and pro-activity of service providers. The project seeks – through transnational outreach research, advocacy, trainings and direct support to professionals and empowerment of C/SEE at-risk migrant children – to find multilateral solutions to the problems that children face prior, during or after migration and that require coordinated protection schemes for individual children.

Services which protect at-risk migrant children in Central and South Eastern Europe from abuse, exploitation or other violations of their rights are provided with a strong emphasis put on child participation. Children on the move are seen as agents in their own lives, having a loud voice, informing and helping design of local services to support and meet the actual needs of their peers and to build a safe and productive future for themselves.

Activities at national and regional levels, coupling meetings with groups of experts, field work with a strong research component will also aim at fostering inter-institutional and transnational collaboration, thus guiding the work and effort of Mario project partners and of key private and public stakeholders, while promoting evidence-based and European solutions to the unsafe migration of C/SEE children.

For more details, please visit our website: http://marioproject.org/