Every year thousands of girls travel from rural areas in Burkina Faso to the cities in order to become domestic workers but they are frequently subjected to abuse, ill-treatment and slave-like conditions. Some villages back home now lack any adolescent girls at all.

Mariam (centre) worked as a domestic servant in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, when her employer tried to sexually assault her. “Girls are often forced to have an abortion,” says the 23-year-old.

Drabo Katia left the rural village of Gon in the western Sourou region at the age of 13 to work as a domestic servant in Mopti, Mali, where she was paid $3 (£2) a month. She’s now returned and advises girls not to leave. “When I was at school I was one of six girls in the class,” she says.

“Four of us left school when I was 13 to migrate for work. Now two of us have come back to the village. Two others continue to do domestic work in the city, but the two other girls in the class refused to leave school and one of them is now a doctor. We really regret not staying in school,” says Ms Katia.

“It’s a sort of modern slavery,” says Moussa Ouedraogo, Sourou co-ordinator for charity Terre des Hommes. “The girls do all the work in the house with few opportunities – they get very little respect."

“Migration isn’t illegal or always bad, but the youngest in particular are frequently exploited,” says Mr Ouedraogo. He says the majority of girls from this region go to Ouagadougou, Mopti or Burkina Faso's second city, Bobo-Dioulasso.

The government and charities have been working since 2009 to try and provide alternative employment to girls so they can stay in their home regions or at least leave later.

“As soon as they’ve spent a year here they can work well. I’ve had three waves of trainees and several now have their own businesses,” says instructor Rakisaba Youssouf. “There are lots of risks for the girls elsewhere.”

“I saw that lots of girls were leaving to go to the city and were abused and poorly treated,” says 17-year-old Madeleine Warima. “I knew girls suffer in the city, so I decided to train as a tailor.”

“I decided not to go to the city as a domestic worker because I was scared because some girls leave and disappear don’t know how to go back to the village,” says Jeniba Warima, aged 19.

Zenabou Ilboudo, 23, set up her own carpentry workshop in Sourou’s main town, Tougon, four months ago. She took up the career - considered to be an unusual one for a woman - after her passion for furniture prompted her mother to arrange voluntary carpentry work which led to a training programme.