Mayerlin Vergara or Mayerlín Vergara Pérez is a Colombian teacher, a director of a shelter home for exploited children and a recipient of the Nansen Refugee Award in 2020.
She had not been to college but she answered an advert for a night worker in the Caribbean coastal city of Barranquilla where she worked for the next seven years.
[3] Despite these laws the trafficking between Venezeala and Colombia increased by nearly a quarter from 2015 to 2019 and sexual exploitation was considered to be the motive in over half the cases.
[5] She works near the city of Riohacha and her area of Colombia has received two million refugees from Venezuela.
In Riohacha she reported that children are held in brothels where men pay an entry fee for sex.