Mending Circle (MeCi)

Modern slavery is the opposite of social justice and sustainable development.  Data by the International Labor Organization (2021), confirm 50 million people, mostly women and children, forced into modern slavery at any given day. Despite private, independent governmental and international efforts, numbers rise every year.  

Armed conflict, climate change, economic disparity and disruption in education and employment, contribute to increases in the number of people forced into unsafe migration routes.  Host and transit countries are unable to manage the influx of displaced population, leading to a heightened risk for the more vulnerable, especially children, women and youth, to become victims of modern slavery.  

Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the global community call for an ending of modern slavery by 2030.  Data are disheartening regarding our capability to meet these goals in time, while employing current methods and solution attempts.  Research identifies fragmented support and access to information as critical issues preventing progress.  This manifests in the lack of awareness of available resources, preventing survivors from accessing help; fragmented services, and lack of comprehensive care addressing, mental health needs, trauma recovery, legal aid, healthcare, and employment opportunities; and communication barriers, including language and cultural hurdles that survivors must overcome. Fear of retribution from traffickers, limited technological literacy and lack of trauma-informed training of providers interacting with victims and survivors in their effort to navigate complex support systems add to the above issues.  

Trauma informed training is crucial for everyone interacting with survivors.   Organizations interacting with and supporting survivors need to invest in adopting a trauma informed organizational mission and devote resources in training and strengthening their staff to deliver trauma informed care and prevent secondary traumatization. In the context of trauma informed care, professionals working with survivors need to maintain appropriate ethical professional boundaries and adopt safeguarding policies that promote equity, inclusion, and nondiscriminatory attitudes. Ongoing support, supervision, and consultation of professionals is a demanding and taxing process both financially and capacity wise, for involved organizations.  

Despite efforts to provide services in a human rights context, while also acknowledging the mental health history and needs of the serviced, the majority of professionals involved have no background and training in trauma informed approaches with individuals that have endured such experiences as modern slavery and abuse.  Research identifies both the risk and the need for trauma-informed training for professionals, to prevent revictimization and/or triggering of PTSD symptoms in survivors.  There also appears to be a scarcity of professionals with such training that could contribute to capacity building and supervision of the professional ecosystem interacting with that population.  Additionally, at times, mental health professionals supervising trainees or other stakeholders are influenced by unconscious biases, stereotyping, and systemic racism. These can lead to unfair and incorrect evaluations, missed opportunities for trainees from marginalized backgrounds and, perpetuate harmful practices, leading to further harming of victims and survivors.  Moreover, the delivery of trauma-informed support to survivors, needs to be swift, thorough, consistent, well-documented, and safe. This is not the case in many instances.

Our solution presented herein has two main breakthrough elements: (a) trauma-informed training and supervision, enabled by (b) AI, developed to allow such.

We are improving the trauma-informed knowledge and response capacity of professionals and other value stakeholders in their efforts to support survivors of modern slavery, by combining AI technology and trauma informed training and supervision.  

Our solution is the first step toward and part of our greater project.  Both are elaborated upon below.  

MeCi is an AI-powered digital human ecosystem (DHE), built around an online Platform featuring mobile application and a CHATBOT, among others https://max.ge/aid001/. The CHATBOT functionality is our current stage of development featured herein in prototype phase https://vimeo.com/978304300?share=copy. The CHATBOT is designed to offer trauma-informed training, support and supervision to the ecosystem of professionals supporting survivors.  

We are using AI technology, programmed in trauma-informed interactions to address the needs and shortages identified above, offering access to training, support and supervision to all professionals both preventative but also live while interacting with survivors.  By accessing the CHATBOT, they will be able to ask for guidance, and receive precise trauma informed wording in real case scenarios Mending Circle _ trauma-informed support. Additionally, the CHATBOT allows professionals to test their knowledge and trauma informed responsiveness, by engaging in a live simulation process in the form of training Mending Circle _ Simulation. Professionals can receive feedback on their response patterns and acquire a score corresponding to their level of expertise in delivering trauma informed services.   

Moreover, the CHATBOT, will also offer a second modality and serve as a referral resource according to the need of each case, offering information to the professional, based on needs, location, while also taking into account the age-group served, the level of danger / risk and the immediacy of the information needed.   

The Platform is designed to (a) empower professionals supporting survivors and other value stakeholders with trauma-informed training and advice; (b) standardize delivery of high-quality training and skills acquisition in trauma informed care delivery; (c) enable modern slavery prevention; and (d) empower survivors of modern slavery by strengthening the systemic and non-systemic response capacity and mobilizing the support ecosystem. The Platform aims at revolutionizing (a) the way modern slavery risk and operation are mitigated, and (b) the way support is provided to survivors of any stage in the modern slavery shame chain, and to survivors of modern slavery.  

MendingCircle.org is strategically allied with Defense for Children International (DCI) https://max.ge/aid001/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/LETTER-OF-SUPPORT-DCI-Mending-Circle.org-intitative.pdf. DCI serves various roles: (a) feeds information, data, expertise upstream to MeCi; (b) provides an example for other value stakeholders to join the MECI effort; (c) diffuses and implements the MeCi Platform mission and services through its 37-country network; (d) raises capital for MeCI.

Currently, our solution targets professionals supporting survivors. Lack of adequate training, scarcity of professionals and fragmented efforts, lead to inadequate support. We are mitigating associated risks as follows:   

Human-Focused: Our commitment to human rights is evident throughout the lifecycle of the CHATBOT. By involving industry specialists before deployment and conducting thorough post-deployment reviews of anonymized conversations, we ensure that the CHATBOT’s performance aligns with legal and ethical standards. These measures help uphold the dignity and rights of individuals, ensuring the system remains compliant with relevant laws and regulations.  

Inclusive: Inclusivity is at the core of our CHATBOT’s design. We actively work to minimize harmful biases and ensure fair and equal treatment for all users. By incorporating diverse perspectives during the development phase and continuously gathering user feedback, we strive to create a system that provides equitable access and support to everyone.  

Responsible: Responsibility in AI usage is paramount in our application. The CHATBOT includes mechanisms to ensure accountability, such as providing users with transparent explanations of how it evaluates responses during training. Transparency fosters a general understanding of the AI’s functioning, including its influence on outcomes. By disclosing this information, we enable users to trust and responsibly interact with the CHATBOT. At the same time feeding only human curated information concerning proper organizations provides higher level of confidence to the user.  

Robust: To ensure robustness, our CHATBOT is developed with a hazard-based safety engineering approach. This involves rigorous quality testing and the implementation of technical safeguards throughout its lifecycle. Apart from measures at runtime such as prompting guardrails etc., the goal is to use anomaly detection algorithms to monitor interactions for unusual behaviors that could indicate security threats or misuse. These proactive and reactive measures help minimize the risk of misuse and mitigate the impact of potential failures, ensuring the CHATBOT operates reliably and effectively in supporting hotline professionals.  

Privacy-Enabled and Secure: The CHATBOT prioritizes user privacy and security through robust design and operational practices. Data exchanged between users and the CHATBOT is encrypted using advanced protocols like TLS/SSL, ensuring that all communications remain confidential and protected from unauthorized access. Additionally, the system employs comprehensive logging and monitoring to detect and address any suspicious activities promptly. This rigorous approach minimizes the risk of errors, unintended use, and malicious activities, ensuring that user interactions are safe and secure.  

Other Ethical Considerations:  

• Registration stakeholders:  due diligence prior to registration, documentation signatures and liability statements, eligibility and selection criteria, would prevent use of the technology and taking advantage of the solution by individuals involved in modern slavery networks.
• Accessibility: The mobile application and our CHATBOT will be available in multiple languages and have accessibility features incl. voice, for professionals and survivors with disabilities.  Our web application prioritizes user experience, featuring an intuitive layout, easy navigation, and responsive design. We are in the process of building our alliance with an organization and experts providing ongoing access to design solutions and improvements.

• Trauma-Informed Design: The interface will be user-friendly and avoid triggering imagery or language 

Our solution aims to improve the lives of survivors of modern slavery, by ensuring their access to high quality trauma informed care by the professionals they are referring to for support and guidance. In particular, survivors of modern slavery face huge challenges in navigating the existing care systems and receive the guidance, protection and care they need without becoming re-traumatized and revictimized by the process. Receiving swift, thorough, and educated support from professionals who are trained in trauma informed care can play a vital role in ensuring that the survivor will engage with the professional in a safe, consistent, and supportive way.  

Very often, survivors are proven reluctant to trust professionals and relay their needs and concerns, leading to a high incidence of drop outs from the reintegration process. By strengthening the professional ecosystem to be adequately equipped with the knowledge and approaches to tackle such challenges, the impact on the lives of the target population would be enormous.  

In parallel, the professionals who provide care to survivors of modern slavery will be empowered by their access to the AI-enabled supervision and feedback in real time, as well as, by the various trainings provided on our Platform. (e.g., webinars, information and training on burn-out symptoms when working with traumatized populations and prevention of vicarious traumatization). The ecosystem of professionals working with and supporting victims of modern slavery consists of various disciplines and levels of training ranging from mental health professionals to vocational coaches, public servants and legal personnel.  

We will significantly advance the quality of care received by the survivors maximizing the potential for their successful re-integration and the healing efforts.  MeCI will also provide support in a child friendly manner (language, emotional maturity, cognitive capacity of children etc.), advancing the protection and care of children survivors.  

By leveraging technology, MeCi will introduce and optimize survivors’ access to diverse critical resources, enable their timely and continuous communication with the support value chain, and connect, incentivize, strengthen the entire ecosystem of value stakeholders including service providers, ultimately helping survivors reintegrate in society leading productive and dignified lives.  

At the same time MeCi shall feed upstream value stakeholders with information collected from survivors and related to their shame journey for the stakeholders’ further actions. Such information feed will be current or timelier, assisting the value stakeholders to accelerate their response times, and thus contributing to combating and preventing modern slavery.  

The MeCi Platform is (a) linking critical human – material - services resources across the value ecosystem: social, psychology and health, legal and judicial, enforcement, financial, physical, well-being, etc., among them and with / for the direct usage by survivors of modern slavery; (b) assisting value stakeholders such as professionals supporting survivors with trauma-informed training and supervision.  

The ultimate goal is to achieve a standardized method of training and evaluation that will lead to a Certification of professionals in trauma-informed care.

The team behind our solution: (a) the founders including survivors; (b) AI/ICT experts; (c) survivors; (d) Defense for Children International (DCI) -all driven by DEI principles, recognizing their responsibility of giving back to the community, and making an impact to serve current and future generations. The team's combined professional knowledge serves the team's societal interests by providing thorough understanding of our solution's feasibility to serve those interests and address the respective societal needs.

We believe that our solution's potential to impact society is profound, and as such, that our multidisciplinary team with diverse community involvement, serves this profound purpose well.   

Tinia, Team Lead; holds a Psychology Doctorate in Clinical Psychology with a specialty in gender-based violence and child abuse. She is engaged as a scientific consultant with several NGOs, focusing on Child Protection and Safeguarding. Her focal points encompass child abuse prevention, professional capacity building in trauma-informed practices to recognize and counter child abuse, advocating for child-friendly and restorative justice approaches for abuse survivors, and addressing gender-based violence.  

Nantina, Humanitarian Lead; has designed and led various international programs targeting displaced population with an emphasis on children survivors. For her commitment and work with children survivors, she was one of ten individuals globally to receive the prestigious CHILD10 Swedish Award in 2020. Nantina has also founded the DCI-Greece Human Rights Academy offering capacity building trainings to professionals related to migration and protection.  

Theo, Venture Lead; associates with various children causes; climate expert adviser with EBRD focusing on Social and Human Capital; involved with biodiversity and sustainability in food & agriculture; launched the first Social related campaign in Greece in 2008 about women leadership and importance in agriculture; part of Zell and the Zell Lurie Institute, and of two institutions teaching and practicing philosophy; has advised the Head of Business Ethics, Centre for Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, University of Zurich.  

Rahmat, Survivor Lead; is a survivor who has dedicated himself to supporting others in similar situations, as these experiences have shaped him into a resilient and empathetic individual committed to making a positive impact.  

Our ICT team has diverse expertise and leadership in projects committed to creating innovative solutions with social impact.  Paata has also faced the grim realities of displaced and vulnerable populations during the two recent wars in his country, Georgia.  

DCI, Strategic Partner; is a leading child rights-focused grassroots movement founded in 1979 with active presence in 37 countries.DCI’s mandate is to ensure effective implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) at local, national and international level. DCI’s vision is that children, as human beings, are able to pursue a life in which they can enjoy their human rights with dignity, in a just and responsible society.  

Agoge Ventures, Venture Partner; is a social entrepreneur organization, working with international donors such as the WB and EBRD, to bridge the finance gap, promote women and youth entrepreneurship, advance STEAM education (incl. for girls), enable innovation, in the donors' territories. The team is involved throughout.

We have no customers or beneficiaries yet, but we have tested our CHATBOT with DCI-Greece: 

Mending Circle _ website

after having built an initial working version of our CHATBOT as presented below:

Chatbot (prototype):  Trauma-informed Support (current mode)
Professionals ask for guidance, and receive precise trauma informed wording in real time at the time of the incident.

Please interact:  Mending Circle _ trauma-informed support

Chatbot (prototype): Simulation (current mode)
Allows the professionals to test their knowledge and trauma informed responsiveness beforehand, by engaging in a live simulation process in the form of training. Professionals can receive feedback on their response patterns and acquire a score corresponding to their level of expertise in delivering trauma informed services.

Please interact:  Mending Circle _ Simulation 

Mending Circle Prototype Showcasing           
https://vimeo.com/978304300?share=copy

We have developed our solution with human and other resources in Greece, one of the main European entry points of refugees in migration routes from the Middle East and northern African countries, capitalizing upon our exposure to modern slavery issues in the South-East Mediterranean region. Our founding and operational team includes survivors and partnerships with organizations such as with Defense for Children International. So, we believe that our team, our hands-on field experience, our business model, and our innovation, allow us to grow sustainably. This is a solid base but, it is not enough to impact the survivors and society as quickly, deeply and comprehensively as needed.  

For that, we hope that MIT Solve, Hewlett Packard Foundation and the Anti-Slavery Collective will offer us a partnership to grow, a like-minded community to interact and catalyze in synergy, and enlarge our effort to impact lives meaningfully in the Mediterranean and globally. An ecosystem to exchange ideas, advance research, connect to networks, promote and enhance our impact.  

One of the main variables associated with the lack of global impact in the management and eradication of the phenomenon of modern slavery is the fragmentation and compartmentalization of effort and initiative.  Although the world is fully aware of the globalization of trafficking routes and the collaboration of worldwide networks in pushing people into slavery situations, we have not been able to address the phenomenon globally or implement a global response at governmental or civil society level.  

There are numerous grassroots organizations that are doing amazing work in their area of expertise, one victim at a time, but as mentioned earlier the reported numbers of victims keep rising.

We hope that through this Program, we will be able to contribute to a more coordinated and global effort.  

Our proposed solution, with the help of the principal institutions behind this Program, could provide (a) a standardized method of training in trauma-informed care for professionals in the Mediterranean, Europe and around the world and (b) a standardized way of assisting survivors via the use of AI-enabled technology that can accommodate for cultural, ethnic, language, location and individual differences, while at the same time collecting and sharing data, in an ethical, transparent and confidential way. The latter, allowing the global community working in the field, governments included, to understand the strengths and weaknesses of current efforts.   

Hewlett Packard Foundation and the Anti-Slavery Collective have great experience, track record and expertise battling modern slavery hands-on, including with technology backed solutions for supporting survivors. This implies invaluable resources, which would allow us to build our solution and thus to take part in a collective resources ecosystem to better understand and counter the dynamics inhibiting progress on issues pertaining to modern slavery,  

Additionally, we hope for this Program to further assist us as a launch pad for an accelerated global implementation, with:   

• strategic decisions such as on technology development;

• synergies concerning other technologies and solutions;
• tools, guidelines, input, and applications to advance our business planning and operational structures;
• funding potential.

Our solution provides professionals with training, support and supervision in trauma informed care. The majority of professionals, providing services to the target population are not mental health experts and have no formal training in psychological first-aid or trauma informed care. Our solution allows professionals to have direct and swift access to dependable information, serving as live guidance responding to the needs of survivors in real time, in a trauma-sensitive way. Our breakthrough elements are:  

• Trauma-informed training and live supervision of professionals and other value stakeholders, supporting survivors; enabled by,
• AI, developed to allow such. Our CHATBOT (Mending Circle Prototype Showcasing https://vimeo.com/978304300?share=copy) provides trauma-informed training and realistic simulations, guiding professionals / trainees in using appropriate language and offering information about relevant organizations
• Immediate Outcomes:
  • Swift, thorough and well-documented trauma-informed information delivery and guidance to professionals, mitigating their knowledge and assessment capacity gaps; allowing them to support survivors dependably and in real time.
  • Swift response time and credible information to survivors, shortening the incident reaction process
• Short-term Outcomes:
  • Standardized ethical care preventing unconscious biases and systemic discrimination.
  • Professionals become proficient in handling interactions with survivors. Develop a deeper understanding of trauma-informed practices and the needs of survivors
• Long-Term Outcomes:
  • Improved interactions lead to better support for survivors. Professionals are better equipped to provide assistance. These factors optimize the chances of positive outcomes for survivors and their faster productive reentry in the community.
  • Trauma-informed training encompasses knowledge and techniques that inoculate professionals from vicarious traumatization, which leads to dropouts and compromised care.
    

Our solution will make available credible data, build capacity for professionals and other value stakeholders, and thoroughly address survivors.  These elements will enable both the private and public sectors to address modern slavery more effectively and globally.  It will also have the capacity to incorporate third-party technology, behavioral, and other advancements by utilizing the knowledge and high-quality data pools.   

Our disruptive innovation potential:

Elements (incl. our trauma-informed orientation) of our solution shall (a) mitigate survivors’ fear and distrust, accelerating care and the process of their reinstatement while mitigating risks of being pulled back into trafficking rings; (b) educate value stakeholders and incentivize new and young professionals; (c) address human error, which in this case may prove detrimental; (d) create a valuable and expanding database of knowledge, a funnel of comparative data and real cases; (e) enable policy making.  

The high quality of the DCI data and our Knowledge Base, are building an accurately informed technological solution at a faster pace.  

Our solution will make available credible data, build capacity for professionals and other value stakeholders, and thoroughly address survivors.  These elements will enable both the private and public sectors to address modern slavery more effectively and globally.  It will also have the capacity to incorporate third-party technology, behavioral, and other advancements by utilizing the knowledge and high-quality data pools.  

Elements of our solution shall (a) mitigate survivors’ fear and distrust, accelerating care and the process of their reinstatement while mitigating risks of being pulled back into trafficking rings; (b) educate value stakeholders and incentivize new and young professionals; (c) address human error, which in this case may prove detrimental; (d) create a valuable and expanding database of knowledge, a funnel of comparative data and real cases; (e) enable policy making.  

Research literature, our test case in Greece https://max.ge/aid001/, and our partnership with DCI -presented in other parts of this document, provide evidence to the disruptive innovation potential of our solution. Our approach is supported by research underscoring the importance of trauma-informed care in improving outcomes for survivors. Studies show that when personnel are trained to use sensitive and appropriate language, victims are more likely to engage and trust the support system.  Additionally, feedback from our target population—professionals and other value stakeholders— (test case in Greece) indicates that realistic simulations significantly enhance their training experience, making them more prepared for real-world interactions.

Our solution provides professionals and other value stakeholders with training, support and supervision in trauma informed care. The majority of professionals, providing services to the target population are not mental health experts and have no formal training in psychological first-aid or trauma informed care. Our solution allows professionals to have direct and swift access to dependable information, serving as live guidance responding to the needs of survivors in real time, in a trauma-sensitive way. Our impact: 

• Trauma-informed training and live supervision of professionals and other value stakeholders, supporting survivors; enabled by,
• AI, developed to allow such. Our CHATBOT (Mending Circle Prototype Showcasing https://vimeo.com/978304300?share=copy) provides trauma-informed training and realistic simulations, guiding professionals / trainees in using appropriate language and offering information about relevant organizations
• Immediate Outcomes:
  • Swift, thorough and well-documented trauma-informed information delivery and guidance to professionals, mitigating their knowledge and assessment capacity gaps; allowing them to support survivors dependably and in real time.
  • Swift response time and credible information to survivors, shortening the incident reaction process
• Short-term Outcomes:
  • Standardized ethical care preventing unconscious biases and systemic discrimination.
  • Professionals become proficient in handling interactions with survivors. Develop a deeper understanding of trauma-informed practices and the needs of survivors
• Long-Term Outcomes:
  • Improved interactions lead to better support for survivors. Professionals are better equipped to provide assistance. These factors optimize the chances of positive outcomes for survivors and their faster productive reentry in the community.
  • Trauma-informed training encompasses knowledge and techniques that inoculate professionals from vicarious traumatization, which leads to dropouts and compromised care.

Our innovative CHATBOT and greater solution has the potential to transform the training of professionals and other value stakeholders, leading to broader positive impacts in the field of survivor support. By providing a trauma-informed robust, technologically advanced training tool, we aim to improve the quality of care and support offered to survivors, ultimately contributing to their recovery and well-being.  

Goal 1: We support and enable the vulnerable survivor population (a) through training and guiding the professionals and other value stakeholders in a trauma-informed context; and (b) directly, by offering and guiding them to assistive resources. In turn, helping reinstate survivors as productive members of the community, shall contribute to eradicating poverty. Indicators: survivor employment rates; human capital accounting for measuring productivity; macroeconomics.  

Goal 2:  By offering direct and indirect lifelong support to survivors, we aim at ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all -i.e., including sensitized and human communities.  Indicators: support recipients; sustained support outcomes; community engagement incl. volunteer numbers; referral success rates; improvements in psychological and physical well-being post-interaction.  

Goal 3: We are training professionals and other value stakeholders. At the same time, we are helping survivors live in an ultimately safe community, thus allowing them access to equal opportunity to re-skill or up-skill. We thus, aim at contributing to inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all.  Indicators: certified professionals; survivor education and occupation statistics.  

Goal 4:  Vulnerable population has a high concentration in women and children. We shall be contributing to gender equality and empowering women and girls. Indicators: STEAM education outcomes; women entrepreneurship; finance gap.  

Goal 5: By supporting survivors become productive members of the community, we are enabling their access to decent work, so that they are able to rebuild their lives. Indicators: employment rates; skills utilization; training levels; qualifications.  

Goal 6:  We are aiming at survivors reentering society successfully, thus contributing to reducing inequalities. Indicators: improvements in psychological and physical well-being post-integration; access to opportunities and placements.  

Goal 7:  By reinstating survivors as productive and equal members of their communities, we aim at contributing toward making cities and human settlements inclusive and safe. Indicators: community engagement; improvement in need for safety and protection.  

Goal 8: We shall contribute to promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. Indicators: sustained improvements in survivors’ lives.  

Goal 9: Successful survivor reintegration shall contribute toward providing access to justice for all    Indicators: protocols in place to ensure privacy and safety; swift justice; accountability.  

Goal 10:  Building our support for survivors and the effort for their successful reintegration in the community, shall induce building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. Indicators: sustained improvements; partnerships with other organizations; awareness.

Goal 11:  Building an extensive, dynamic and global pool of high-quality data to support informed capacity building, policy, research, and other solutions. Indicators: impact results; solution and research outcomes.

Trauma-related training and supervision, and the delivery of the support to survivors, as these are enabled by AI, constitute the core elements of our solution.  

Our proposed solution addresses and mitigates capacity building in the professional ecosystem focusing on the training of mental health and non-mental health professionals in trauma informed care, to prevent unhelpful interactions and potentially harmful practices due to lack of knowledge and training.  

This is one of the most important variables, identified by research as a risk factor in the re-victimization of modern slavery survivors, often implicated in the difficulty experienced by survivors in their effort to become reintegrated in society. The standardized training, evaluation and support of professionals and other value stakeholders, working with survivors, is enabled and augmented using ethical AI technology, which helps them develop and sustain a trauma informed delivery of services and care.  

The use of our trauma-informed trained CHATBOT has the potential to transform the training of professionals, leading to broader positive impacts in the field of survivor support. By providing this robust, technologically advanced training tool, we aim to improve the quality of care and support offered to survivors, ultimately contributing to their recovery and well-being. 

Our CHATBOT https://vimeo.com/978304300?share=copy leverages:  

• a sophisticated LLM at its heart, trained trauma-informed datasets, allowing it to comprehend context, nuance, and a wide array of topics. This AI-driven component is designed to understand and generate human-like text, ensuring that interactions with users are accurate and relevant;
• a Database serving as a Knowledge Base of the most important organizations and relevant information, continually updated and curated to provide essential data that can enhance conversations and provide users with accurate, contextually relevant information. This process is easily extendable in new countries; and
• a powerful Search Engine, essential for retrieving the most pertinent information in response to user queries, complementing the capabilities of the LLM,

all enhancing the CHATBOT’s ability to provide precise and informed responses.  

The interface through which users interact with our solution is a meticulously designed web application on our Platform, seamlessly integrated with the LLM and search engine ensuring a cohesive and efficient user experience - it ensures that users can effortlessly engage with the system, access information, and complete tasks with minimal friction.

Part-time:

• Founders:  Tinia, Nantina, Theo (3)
• AI and ICT:  Manos, Loukas, Paata (3)
• Volunteers: DCI-Greece
• Partners: Defense for Children International (DCI); Agoge Ventures

Full-time:

• Founders:  Rahmat (1)
• AI and ICT: Tryfon (1)

Our team has been engaged directly and indirectly with matters and projects pertaining to survivors and modern slavery for more than 20 years in Greece, United States of America, as well as with the European Council.

Pursuant to needs assessment, we started working on our solution in January 2024.

Tinia, Founder and CEO, holds a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology, an MS in Applied Psychology from Long Island University/C.W.Post in NY; a MA in General Psychology from New York University. She is engaged as a scientific consultant with several NGOs, focusing on Child Protection and Safeguarding. Her focal points encompass child abuse prevention, professional capacity building in trauma-informed practices to recognize and counter child abuse, advocating for child-friendly and restorative justice approaches for abuse survivors, and addressing gender-based violence.  

Nantina, Founder and Chief Humanitarian Officer; human rights lawyer; child & women rights expert. She is an advocate and strategic litigator before EU Institutions and the UN, specialized in International Human Rights Law (LLM from Utrecht University) with emphasis on displaced and marginalized population. Founder and CEO of DCI in Greece, and VP of the EU Child Friendly Justice Network based in Brussels. With the Council of Europe, she is an invited Expert in the Consultation Group for the Children of Ukraine and a member of the Committee of Experts on the Prevention of Violence against children via Sexuality Education. Nantina has completed three years of academic research at Glasgow University in International Children’s Rights Law.  

Theo, Founder and Executive Chairman; serial social entrepreneur, impact investor, and an international business and investment advisor with C-level experience, involved with early-stage ventures for over thirty years. He has led or supported over 500 public and private international transactions with a total value of over US$6 billion, and holds an MBA from the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business.  

Rahmat, Survivor Leadership Director and Co-Founder of MendingCircle.org; a 22-year-old survivor from Afghanistan. Experienced in helping refugees and translating for humanitarian organizations in Greece, now based in Switzerland, he is a devoted volunteer assisting those in need.  

Rahmat serving as an example, we envision several of the survivors to be employed by MeCi in various capacities, depending on the stage of their reinstatement journey. We have also taken various other actions to meet this goal:  we have forged a partnership with DCI https://max.ge/aid001/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/LETTER-OF-SUPPORT-DCI-Mending-Circle.org-intitative.pdf, capitalizing on DCI’s DEI track record; our venture partner, Agoge Ventures, has made available its network and capacity related to women and youth entrepreneurship in North America, Europe, Sub-Sahara, China; our founders’ strong relationship with: The University of Michigan- Zell Lurie Institute (USA), Zell (Israel; USA), The Hellenic Initiative (USA; Greece), ACG Research Centre and Deree Department of Psychology (Greece), The Justice Initiative, Safe Society, European Child Friendly Justice Network; volunteer networks, etc.  

Manos, Partner and CTO; Stanford Graduate School of Business and London Business School; MSc in Telecommunications Engineering, Imperial College; Electrical Engineering Diploma, NTU of Athens.; 25+ years of experience as CIO/CTO, Deputy CEO in the ICT sector.  

Loukas, Partner; senior ML engineer specialized in developing AI solutions. Among others, he has led the development of advanced chatbot systems at Aisera, serving as the main architect for LLM-based solutions.  

Paata, is a senior AI and software engineer; academic and educator with Ilia State University in Georgia.

We shall offer our solution B2B to organizations / value stakeholders, employing professionals and non-professionals supporting survivors of modern slavety. In doing so, we shall:  

• Leverage our strategic partner DCI’s data and network in 37 countries, to impact: (a) our trauma-informed services offering to professionals and survivors; (b) DCI’s mandate of enabling justice for children; (c) an expansive network of strategic alliances.
• Render the survivors, lifelong gratis beneficiaries with certain of those services phased out after the survivors’ successful reintegration in the community. Survivors will also: (a) receive part of the envisioned Government lump sum payments mentioned here below; (b) benefit from project and case-specific crowd funding; and (c) benefit from a VC Fund which will create safe and affordable homes.
• Assist Governments by placing the survivors as eventual productive members of the community.
• Support States and Institutions implement guidelines toward their members / partners / etc. with respect to people, including children, affected by war and displacement at risk of exploitation and slavery.
• Support States and Institutions develop and implement capacity building training for mental health professionals and non-professionals who are supporting the survivors’ frontline, including camp personnel, civil servants and relevant government personnel, social workers and NGO personnel, and others,
• and thus, enable these value stakeholders and organizations to offer support, improved in terms of specificity and credibility, thus optimizing human and other resources, mitigating opportunity cost, and maximizing impact.
• Improve data quality and accessibility, enabling scientific, forensic, academic, and business disciplines, among others.
• Contribute to ensuring significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced stakeholder cooperation, in order to provide adequate and predictable means, to implement programmes and policies to end modern slavery in all its dimensions.

To date we have developed our solution including the prototype CHATBOT (a) with own investment, and (b) through a strategic partnership with DCI https://max.ge/aid001/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/LETTER-OF-SUPPORT-DCI-Mending-Circle.org-intitative.pdf.

We have performed a test with DCI-Greece, involving professionals supporting survivors in Greece https://max.ge/aid001/.

We have engaged in several DCI cases at different levels -e.g., “In the Shadows” / DCI Greece https://max.ge/aid001/?page_id=98.

We have started retrieving certain DCI raw data for the purpose of categorizing and analyzing them.  

We have established MendingCircle.org in Switzerland and are in the process of incorporating a for-profit company in the U.S ("Company"). 

MendingCircle.org and the Company are affiliated, and have separate but complementary responsibilities, serving MeCi.

MendingCircle.org originated (a) funding: philanthropy and ESG related donations, grants, sponsorships; and (b) voluntarism, shall fund and support the Platform and MeCi technology-related development.  In addition, project and case-specific crowd funding will be employed ad hoc.  

DCI serves various roles: (a) feeds information, data, expertise upstream to the Company; (b) provides an example for other value stakeholders to join MeCi; (c) diffuses and implements the MeCi Platform mission and services through its 37-country network. In particular as regards (c), DCI shall raise capital through its own mechanism to fund (c) -a practice already in place for other DCI projects.  

Our Company shall ensure additional revenue streams as follows:  

• Governments contribute to MeCi an one-time lump sum for each survivor successful reintegration based on agreed KPIs
• Non-government value stakeholders (incl. PPPs and public enterprises under corporate law) pay an annual Platform subscription fee -possibly set at different levels depending on the stakeholders’ function and statue

• B2B services are offered to service providers and other value stakeholders with set consultancy / advisory fees
• Advertising space on the Platform is sold to value stakeholders
• Data analytics sold to value stakeholders -. e.g., governments, NGOs, service providers, research institutes, policy makers, etc. 
• Licensing rights for solutions developed by MeCi -e.g., design / search, which may concern private and public ventures
• Capital raise: we anticipate a seed round and Series A within the next three years