At HAGAR, we believe that lives broken by the traumas of human trafficking, slavery and human rights abuse can be made whole again. However, the road to recovery is often long and difficult as trauma is a deeply personal experience that impacts individuals on many different levels. To cater to these needs, HAGAR provides long-term, individualised services for women and children, including residential and transitional care and support, legal aid, counselling, education, family services and employment in Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Singapore and Myanmar. Our ultimate aim and satisfaction is in seeing once broken lives flourish.

Our Model

The Whole Journey

At HAGAR, we are committed to the whole journey. The whole journey starts with a survivor, an individual who has experienced severe trauma as a result of slavery, trafficking, or abuse. From the moment that individual enters our care, we work with them to assess what their needs are, and offer a full range of extensive and individualised services. We help them rebuild dignity, trust and resilience.

We help them to find safe places to live in, provide trauma care and counselling, legal support, education, vocational skills training and job placements, and finally assisting them with community reintegration. The whole journey encapsulates each step taken by a survivor toward healing. Our goal is for each individual to be a champion for change in their own life and in the community.

Protect

We ensure a safe environment, including legal support, for our clients, staff and caregivers. We use a trauma-informed care approach to ensure the communities in which our clients heal and our staff operate in are safe and supportive. We provide access to legal counsel, as well as case-management and counselling support throughout legal processes.

Heal

We empower individuals to recover from their physical injuries, medical conditions and impact of trauma. We train counsellors using methods that are aligned with international best practice and informed by partnerships with leading research universities like Johns Hopkins and Harvard. HAGAR’s expertise in trauma-informed care has been developed over 25 years of working with women and children who have experienced profound trauma as a result of slavery, human trafficking and abuse. With the input and commitment of other global leaders in trauma-informed care, we have established the very first Centre of Excellence for Trauma-informed Care; a collaborative space for academics, fieldwork practitioners, development specialists, and advocates to come together to further research and implement the most effective means of recovery for trauma survivors across the globe.

Thrive

With personal empowerment at the heart of the holistic recovery model, HAGAR works to address the vicious cycle of exploitation and abuse by building in their lives a strong foundation of a secure and productive life. The ultimate goal is to help clients become financially independent and be able to care for themselves and their families in the long run. We do this by creating educational and economic opportunities for our clients to improve their literacy and skills, enabling them to thrive in a diverse, complex and fast-changing society. To achieve transformation, education together with vocational skills training and job preparation play a critical role in lessening their risks to re-exploitation

Lead

We amplify the voices and experiences of those we serve to bring about the systemic changes needed to combat human trafficking, slavery and abuse. In all of the countries we work in, we partner with a wide network of help agencies, local governments, corporations, academic institutions, and the civil society, championing for the same mission to ensure that change takes place in a systemic, sustainable way.