Today I attended the Human Trafficking Engagement Day at the Capitol Building in Olympia. I heard of the event through a friend at Operation Nightwatch and decided that I definitely wanted to know more about human trafficking and what could be done to break these modern day chains of slavery. The event was sponsored by Seattle Against Slavery (SAS). According to their website, SAS "is a grassroots coalition of nonprofit service and awareness organizations, government agencies and a thriving community of modern day abolitionists" committed to raising awareness and finding solutions to the growing issue of human trafficking.
Upon entering the Columbia room in the legislative building I was impressed at the attendance of the event. The schedule divided the morning into two parts: education & action.
We began the morning with 6 speakers each sharing about their connection to and understanding of the crime of human trafficking. I could rattle off the names of the speakers and their list of credentials but really, I'd rather highlight a few comments that stood out for me from their presentations.
I appreciated the details shared by state Senators Fraser & Kohl-Welles concerning how the WA legislature has been addressing the issue (e.g. WA state was the first to criminalize human trafficking on a state level, WA requires international match making agencies ["mail order brides"] to notify foreign clients about their right to request a background check on the WA resident employing the agency).
I appreciated the clarity of Shared Hope International's policies regarding they addressed the issue. One of Shared Hope's policies is to create protective safe houses where former prostituted girls can hopefully begin to find healing amongst other women who have come through the process of restoration.
After the education portion of the morning we moved on the action phase. Unfortunately, at this stage, the event's organization seemed to unravel a bit as the distribution of information packets destined for state legislators didn't quite seem to go as planned. While I wasn't able to take their action step this morning I did send my legislator a message this afternoon asking them to support legislation opposing human trafficking.
Overall it was great to learn more about what non-profits, churches (although not as many as I would have liked to see), and state officials are doing to address this issue. There's plenty more to be done before human trafficking is a thing of the past.
Learn more about the organizations and legislation mentioned above at:
Seattle Against Slavery
www.seattleagainstslavery.org
Washington State Task Force Against the Trafficking of Persons
www.commerce.wa.gov/DesktopModules/CTEDPublications/CTEDPublicationsView.aspx?tabID=0&ItemID=6238&MId=950&wversion=Staging
Shared Hope International
www.sharedhope.org
posted by Brandon
2 comments:
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