Melis Karabulut's series features the kindred stories of the ordinary and extraordinary people of Prague, highlighting how they contribute to making the city a better place with arts, storytelling, and healing communities.
In this article, we introduce Yael Schoultz, an academic and activist from Johannesburg, South Africa. For several years, she reported on North Korean human rights stories and actions. In search of a new destination for her academic career, she moved to Prague in After her arrival, she decided to specialize in the topic of human trafficking. Back then, the Czech Republic ranked as Europe's third worst country for forced labor and sex trafficking.
Geographically, it was the sourcing, transit and stay destination for sex trafficking,'' said Schoultz. With an aim to observe the level of sexual exploitation of Czech and foreign women in the country, Schoultz has been paying regular visits to the brothels and the notorious streets around Wenceslas Square, I.
For many long years, Schoultz and her volunteers have collected countless sex trafficking stories and connected the dots between them. When I ask about the main goal of her work, Schoultz said:. We're not trying to stop sex work, we're trying to prevent the sex work that is forced and exploited.
We provide informative leaflets about human trafficking and how to get out of it, as well as crisis numbers. Some women want to do sex work, and we encourage them to take care of their health, and take actions to avoid STDs. Being a collector of these difficult stories is a challenging task. As we dive into them, Schoultz underlines that building human-to-human relationships with the victims is crucial in order to build credibility through many stories she listened to from countless women.
