Welcome to being a client. We hope you’ll end this journey safer and happier.

(Note, some of this is out of date).

Our Principles

• We are like the emergency room. Our goal is to keep the maximum number of people alive. So if you are in a relatively safe place it may take longer
• We never, ever ask for money. We don’t require that you have money to receive help. We will never ask you to do work for us. We have, in the past, offered a few clients or former clients paid work, which we paid at a fair market rate.
• We have no ‘agents’. If someone claims to be acting on our behalf, check with the current watch officer.
• This is a team effort. See below.

Team Effort

When you become our client you agree to be part of a team, a team whose goal is to get you to safety.

We’ve had clients who thought we were a way to get money, and we’ve had clients who were self destructive. If you can’t be part of the team, we can, and have, dropped clients. If this leaves them in danger, so be it.

We’re in a situation not far removed from genocide, and we cannot and will not waste time playing games.

Who Is On Your Team

You’ll have at least two people on your team – a case manager, and a support person.

The case manager’s role is to work with you to formulate and execute a plan to get you out.

Traveling this way is emotionally brutal. Many of you will be leaving behind everything you knew. For many of you, it’s when you socially transition. You may find yourself in a foreign culture, with an uncertain future. You will probably be bored, lonely, and missing home. You may be in danger. So you can also have a support person.

Your support person is there to help you keep yourself together mentally and emotionally during this time.

We also offer a weekly online support group meeting, open only to our passengers. Your support person can help you attend the group.

Appointments

We work from appointments.

You can start the process by scheduling an intake appointment. Drop an email to annie+intake@transrescue.org suggesting a time. We’re in CET time zone (the Netherlands).

We know some organizations engage clients for some intake process, and then simply go silent. Or that never respond to emails. We know this feels like being abandoned, and we refuse to do this.

If you miss an appointment, don’t panic. We understand that the internet or electrical power may be iffy where you are, or you may not have freedom of movement. Just schedule a new appointment.

We maintain a Telegram group. This group is monitored. If you have a true emergency, contact us through the watch officers on the group.

We may, from time to time, send you emails. For example, if your case officer discovers a new route to get you out they may need to contact you in a hurry.

Stages

As a client you’ll move through stages. Every client is a bit different, but generally these are the stages.

Intake

Use our appoint maker to make an appointment for an intake interview.

Prepare for your interview.

1. You’ll need a Telegram account. If you don’t have Telegram, you can get it at telegram.org
2. You’ll need an email address that only you have access to.
3. You’ll need some confidence that your family doesn’t know your phone password or that your email or Telegram account are compromised.
4. If you have a passport, be prepared to send us a photo of your passport. If not, be prepared to show us an official ID of some sort (we need to check that you’re an adult).
5. Request an intake interview using the appointment scheduler below.
6. When the interview time is confirmed, you’ll be sent a link to a Google Meet room.
7. At the time of the interview, please try to be somewhere with decent internet.

Attend your intake interview.

1. During the interview you’ll be given a detailed set of instructions to proceed with your case.
2. The interview is not a ‘test’. We think every trans person deserves to be safe. That said, this is a team effort. We will work to move you, but you have to work with us. If you scam us, or are simply too difficult to deal with, we can’t really help you.
3. At your interview the intake workers will set out some further steps for you to take. The most common first step is to obtain a passport and Covid-19 vaccination certificate.
4. After your intake interview you’ll be sent an email describing the further steps to take, including scheduling appointments with your case manager and support worker.

If you cannot attend your intake appointment, you’ll just need to schedule a new one.

You’ll also be asked to provide us with a few documents

• A video of yourself reading our Passenger’s agreement. This is to protect us – if a client is forcibly returned to their parents, or taken into police custody, they may be tortured and made to claim we kidnapped them. We can demonstrate that you did this of your own will via the video.
• A photo of your ID or the photograph page of your passport.
• You’ll also need to obtain a Covid-19 vaccination certificate.

Waiting

We have more clients than we can immediately move. You’ll be asked to wait for your turn.

We do handle cases on a ‘most desperate need first’ basis, but when there’s no clear difference in urgency, we work on the oldest cases we have that we can actually do something to progress.

During this time we’ll maintain occasional contact. We’ll also ask you to work on specific projects. These can be items such as building up evidence of income or obtaining certain documents.

We have more people needing help than we can handle. But we don’t want to fail to respond to people. We get it – you’re the one in trouble, we shouldn’t be leaving you wondering if you’ve been forgotten.

Occasionally we need to move people away from immediate threats from family or threatening local religious figures, police, or criminal elements. We can help you with a local move if we believe it’s needed. This is not something we do casually.

We maintain secret ‘safe houses’ in various places. If we move you to a safe house, expect to be asked to do or not do certain things to protect yourself and the safe house. Your behavior will affect other people’s safety as well as your own.

Moving

Eventually, probably after you’ve gotten thoroughly frustrated with how long it’s taking, we’ll try to get you out. You need to WORK WITH US. This is a team effort.

We’re aware there is a lot of information and misinformation going around the internet about how to get out. If you make your own plans, discuss them with us. We do this every day and are probably better informed than you. And we need to make sure you don’t ruin your chances by doing something foolish.

Smart phones are an important part of all our lives. We may ask you to severely restrict what you do on the internet or your phone, for your safety.

Things may go well or not. It can be very dispiriting to have tried something and it didn’t work. You can also end up in a worse situation than you started with. But we don’t abandon people. We’ll try something else.

Post Move

Eventually, we hope we get you out.

You’ll need help settling into your new location. We’ll be there for you to help you with this.

We can help you get started – if you leave with only what you’re wearing we’ll see you’re not homeless at the destination. But we CANNOT HELP YOU WITH ONGOING RENT AND INCOME.

So, if all this sounds like a journey you want to go on, head over to our appointments page and make an intake appointment.

Thank you for your trust.