Since 2023, Renee Jones has led a Global Initiative program that has significantly empowered Malawi, Africa, one of the world’s poorest nations, to combat human trafficking.
“The whole goal is to share our programs and services to teach them how to use what they have because we started as a small nonprofit in a storefront and didn’t have a lot of money,” said Jones, founder and executive director of the Renee Jones Empowerment Center (RJEC) in the Archwood-Denison neighborhood of Cleveland. “We showed them how to do the Project Red Cord Outreach program we provide in five struggling neighborhoods here. They’ve been highly effective, and it just blossomed into something magnificent.”
This past July, Malawi’s Project Red Cord Outreach team reached more than 200 people, including women, children, parents and guardians, and law enforcement officers. According to Jones, they provided information that educated attendees on the nature and dangers of human trafficking, information about their human rights, reporting mechanisms and the roles and responsibilities of law enforcement personnel and structures.
The team also delivered food and clothing to numerous indigent families. The World Bank ranks Malawi as the fourth poorest country in the world, with more than half the population living in poverty and one-fifth in extreme poverty.
“The traffickers take complete advantage of them because they don’t have any money,” Jones said. “They can be easily tricked by false promises because they just want to feed their families.”
During RJEC’s initiative in Malawi, the Global Initiative team also mobilized and trained 80 men who are members of community security forums. The RJEC training empowers them to be vigilant in identifying and reporting any manifestations of human trafficking. This unofficial security force is especially vital, since law enforcement corruption is not uncommon in Malawi, according to Jones.
The goal is to have 500 registered volunteers who will support the Malawi team by spreading human trafficking awareness, rescue of victims, victims care, resource mobilization, and help with distribution of food or providing clothing during outreach.
According to the U.S. State Department, the Malawi government identified and referred to care 248 trafficking victims during 2024. Additionally, NGOs reported that the government identified 325 victims and referred 132 victims to care in the previous year.
Fully aware that children are one of the groups most vulnerable to human trafficking, the July outreach included school-based activities to share knowledge and skills with children. The Global Initiative supports these activities because pupils often share what they learn in school with guardians and household members and frequently serve as agents of positive change in their communities.
In RJEC’s monthly newsletter, Jones wrote: “The approach taken during the month of July will ensure that civil society, nongovernmental organizations, community-based organizations and religious groups who attended the outreach sessions are well-informed.”
How RJEC connected to Malawi
Jones wanted to start the Global Initiative for several years, but needed to find the right country that would have people willing to commit to working with the RJEC. Then one of her board members gave her a connection to Malawi when Maxwell Matewere visited the board member’s church to discuss the poverty, lack of employment opportunities, human trafficking and other challenges his country faced.
Matewere, who serves as National Project Officer on Trafficking in Persons for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, also works for the non-governmental organization Eye of the Child, which protects and promotes child rights in Malawi and Southern Africa. He believes the work he and the organization he founded in 1998 have done with RJEC has contributed to the strengthening of Malawi’s response to the crime of Trafficking in Persons.
“The work Renee is doing is very friendly, innovative and suitable to the local situation, and our local partners have been able to adopt it easily,” he said. “Beside better resources, the impact has been immeasurable as many victims have been rescued from unsuspected sites, and partners no longer sit in the office but prefer to take the service to the streets and community.”
Matewere shared one example of the trafficking he’s seen in Malawi, in which three girls accepted work in a restaurant in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital. The parents of the girls consented to the position, which they believe was an opportunity for gainful employment. The job offer turned out to be a lie, and the three girls were quickly forced into prostitution.
Implementing RJEC’s Global Initiative
Initially, Jones wanted to teach Malawians what human trafficking was and how it manifested in their endemically impoverished country. Jones used Zoom meetings to introduce the concept of trafficking to people who had fled to Malawi from other countries and now resided in refugee camps. These were camps that were intended for 10,000 people, but had overflowed to 50,000. She knew they were especially vulnerable to traffickers because of their dire circumstances.
She brought in law enforcement experts from the Cuyahoga County Human Trafficking Task Force to train the people in the camp and then provided special training sessions for the police in Malawi.
Recognizing that she was facing a language barrier when trying to explain human trafficking due to the multiple languages spoken by the camp residents, Jones devised a simple image that captured the predatory circumstance: a spider.
“I used the image of a spider, so they could all easily understand,” Jones explained, noting the challenge of overcoming the lack of resources available for training tools. “The spider was the best image to describe to them how the trafficker would get them caught in their web of lies. That’s how it all began, and you have to work with what you’ve got.”
Next, Jones began to teach the refugees how to do outreach programs similar to the RJEC Project Red Cord Night Out.
In May 2024, Matewere’s wife, who also works with Eye of the Child, spent three weeks doing hands-on training with Jones and her team.
“She went everywhere with us and got a chance to see how we do everything,” Jones recalled. “She went with us on a retreat – everywhere we could take her so that she could take it back home. Some of the things they can do aren’t exactly what we have, but they were able to replicate a lot of what we do, especially the outreach activities.”
For roughly a year and a half, Jones and her team did weekly Zoom meetings with Matewere and the people they were training in Malawi. Now the meetings have been discontinued, because the Malawi team “has it down to a science now,” according to Jones. Nonetheless, they remain in constant communication with each other.
Jones taught that they had to make do with what they had. Although Malawi is a poor country, the team can distribute food or clothing that is donated or made by volunteers. Even a pair of socks is beneficial to someone in need.
“They went from a place where there was no knowledge to now – their Project Red Cord Outreach is regular and just like we do it, only they have a lot more people to help, and it’s just flourished,” Jones said. “They report every month on where they’ve been, what they’re doing and how they’re spreading the outreach.”
Currently, Jones is considering two countries – Germany and India – to launch a second Global Initiative. She expects to decide which is the best fit for her next project by the end of this year.
Project Red Cord Outreach Nights in northeast Ohio
In addition to the extensive work she has done every day since founding the RJEC in 2002, Jones hosts outreach events every Friday night. She identified five neighborhoods in Cleveland and Akron where poverty, prostitution and sex trafficking intersect.
Each week, the location rotates to neighborhoods in Cleveland at the corner of Lorain Avenue and 73rd Street, where the program started before the RJEC moved to its new location in 2019. The events are hosted at several locations utilized by RJEC, with spaces on Archwood Ave. and Pearl Road directly below the RJEC, Page and Euclid Avenue in East Cleveland, the People’s Church of God in Christ in Collinwood and at the Springhill Apartments in Akron.
In the winter months, they host an indoor event on Friday nights on the first floor of the Brookside Family Center. Just a floor above the event – which is nestled next to St. Vincent de Paul’s sizable thrift store and a hunger center, is RJEC’s home base. The family center is operated by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a Catholic organization of volunteers committed to ending poverty.
“Our goal is always to be available for somebody who may be a potential victim, is a victim or is vulnerable, so they can get information about who we are,” Jones said. “These areas have a lot of prostitution, trafficking going on, and they have no idea that there’s a way for them to get out, if they are involved.”
At the street outreach events, visitors can receive a free meal and choose from a variety of free items – such as personal hygiene products, clothing and toys for their children. There are also medical experts available to perform blood pressure screenings and provide information about human trafficking and trauma care.
Over the years, Jones has added new activities for visitors, from art therapy projects to chess games where people can learn, play or watch others play.
“The people that attend the Project Red Cord Nights experience a plethora of services and experiences,” said Beau Hill, executive director of The Salvation Army Harbor Light Complex in Cleveland, which brings its mobile canteen to the events. “The participants are appreciative of the help and respond to the genuine approach of Renee and her team, and through this engagement the initial relationships are established, so people know they are loved and help is available when they need it.”
RJEC’s onsite medical clinic
Two years ago, Jones received a grant from the Three Arches Foundation in Lakewood that funds health services for underserved populations. The foundation recognized the need for basic health care services among trafficking survivors and people living in the neighborhoods RJEC reached,
The two-year grant provides the funds to employ a nurse who can help people at the RJEC and others from around that neighborhood as well as the Lorain Avenue neighborhood. Previously, many people were served by Lakewood Hospital, which closed in February 2016. The foundation offers a way to continue providing health care services to marginalized patients.
“It took me a long time to pitch them but the area we are in has such a large amount of addicted people who are not getting any type of care,” Jones said. “Even though our nurse does basic access, we learned how important it is for those individuals to have somewhere to come get their vitals like blood pressure checked and educational programs to teach them.”
The pilot program ended up achieving notable success. In the first half of 2025, 399 patients were seen at the onsite clinic and the Archwood and Lorain outreach locations, serving 216 women and 183 men. That marks a 49-person increase during the same period last year.
The foundation considered the results significant enough to fund RJEC’s medical clinic for another two years.
In August, Jones hosted her 14th Annual Collinwood Resource Fair in the church parking lot they use for the Project Red Cord Night Out. The event features tables with more than 20 resource providers for the community, and it usually draws approximately 300 people. The fair always dispenses information about important community resources, food and prizes for children and families.
“Renee employs a holistic, trauma-informed approach and provides wraparound services for everyone that touch all aspects of an individual’s life,” said Shanell Harris, interim director of the Trauma Recovery Center at MetroHealth Medical Center. “What makes her most effective is she doesn’t push anyone but allows them to have a sense of autonomy to determine when they are ready for RJEC’s services.”
Keep our local journalism accessible to all
Reader support is crucial as we continue to shed light on underreported neighborhoods in Cleveland. Will you become a monthly member to help us continue to produce news by, for, and with the community?
P.S. Did you like this story? Take our reader survey!
