Human Trafficking Assignment -- IAHTI Dinner

On 6 October, several of my students and I attended a dinner hosted by the International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators. The event was designed to raise awareness. The 8 speakers did exactly that.

We heard from representatives of faith-based organizations (what churches and NGOs can do to help, e.g., make facilities available to victims), from law enforcement trained in narcotics awareness (and how prescription drugs are used to control victims), from a victim herself (and her efforts with the organization Students Against Slavery), from a special agent with Homeland Security, and also from the leadership of the IAHTI with more about their organization and what we can do to help.

For more about IAHTI, please see

www.IAHTI.org

It was an incredibly informative evening, and I am glad so many of my students could attend.

For extra credit, I invited students who attended the event to draft short papers about what they learned from the speakers at the event. Here are excerpts from one student's paper:

"Human trafficking always occurred to me as something that was not prevalent in the United States, or at least not in the picturesque Tampa Bay area. I was especially surprised to learn that human trafficking could so negatively affect a normal, college-educated, American citizen such as me....I learned that Florida has one of the highest instances of human trafficking in the country. The Tampa Bay area makes a prime destination location for human trafficking because of its abundance of resort hotels and strip clubs. I never realized that human trafficking also affected the hotel and restaurant industry. I soon realized that people like me were one of the biggest problems facing the prevention and prosecution of human trafficking. Because many people don't realize what human trafficking is and how frequently it occurs in the United States, they are unable to take the necessary steps to identify and save the victims....This lecture made me realize the importance of the research project that the class is about to undertake...My biggest hope for the project now is that I will be able to educate at least one person as to what human trafficking is and what simple steps can be taken to prevent it."

Here we are pictured with the emcee, Jennifer Holloway from BayNews9.

(I made a donation to IAHTI and ended up winning door prizes! My husband and I promptly used the gift certificate for Cafe Ponte to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary that weekend.)