288 – Practical Strategies to go Beyond Awareness

Ending Human Trafficking Podcast

Sandie and Dave reflect on how far the movement has come since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in October 2000, and was soon followed by the United Nations Palermo Protocol in December 2000. In 2023, we are positioned to move beyond awareness. Ending human trafficking requires everyone–educators, business leaders, social workers, attorney, nonprofits, and the church–to do more!

Key Points

1. Alert your community that January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Awareness Month and bring visibility to the issue.
2. Listen to Survivors on the Ending Human Trafficking podcast.
3. Consume consciously and use the Sweat & Toil app to have age-appropriate conversations with your child.
4. Join the Ending Human Trafficking: Strategies for the Church Today book challenge:
   1. Read the book in 31 days for the month of January.
   2. Send the book to three people–a great Christmas gift!! (at ivpress.com use EHTlearn for 30% off + free shipping)
   3. Start a book club to read and discuss together using our leader’s guide (coming soon).
5. Attend local Slavery & Human Trafficking Prevention Month events – check out GCWJ’s January events:
   1. January 7 – Train the Trainer from 9 AM-12 PM
   2. January 11 – Sextortion film screening from 6-8 PM
   3. January 28 – Smart Families, Safe Kids from 11 AM – 2PM
6. Join the Ending Human Trafficking podcast challenge using the 31 Day Podcast Challenge.

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Transcript

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 288, Practical Strategies to Go Beyond Awareness.

Production Credits [00:00:10] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:29] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:35] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:37] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. You hear us say that at the beginning of every episode, and we do invite you every time to start by studying the issues, and we often have that invitation at the end of our conversations. For those who haven’t already, go to endinghumantrafficking.org to download Sandie’s guide as a starting point. And yet there is so much that you can do, regardless of how much you have listened to us or what your level of expertise is, or perhaps you’re just picking this up for the very first time. The mission of the Global Center for Women and Justice is to take action and to move beyond just awareness and to actually take action in order to have some wonderful things begin to move forward. And you can, regardless if you’ve been thinking and contributing for a decade, or perhaps you’ve just downloaded this episode for the first time today. There are many things you can do that go beyond awareness and that you can take action on right now. Today we’re going to look at six. We’re often asked, Sandie and I, what can I do to move forward? In addition to listening to the show, in addition to going on the website, what can I do to move forward? And we’ve got six key things for you. Things that are very timely in the next couple of months that will help you to move forward and to take action to go beyond awareness. Sandie, I’m so glad we get to have this conversation because there’s a lot happening, isn’t there?

Sandie [00:02:13] Oh, my goodness. There really is. And when I think back to 2011, when you invited me to start this podcast, I had no idea we would still be doing it 11 years later at my desk. But the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was passed in October 2000 and shortly after the United Nations passed the Palermo Protocol. And now we’re going to be in 2023, and we are positioned to move way beyond just knowing about it, beyond just being aware. I keep telling people, don’t invite me to speak at an awareness event. I won’t do it because we are way beyond awareness. We need our whole community, teachers and preachers and business leaders, social workers, attorneys and judges. Every single part of society has a place at the table: government and technology, education and religion, business and nonprofits. And I’m using like generalized place at the table. But Dave, I still love the image of the pithari. That great big jug with handles baked into it all over so everybody can find a place to do something.

Dave [00:03:41] Indeed. And as we’re looking at these six areas today, we’d invite you to be thinking not all of them, but one of them. What’s your handle? What’s the one of these six that you might say, Hey, I’m ready to do that, to go beyond just awareness and to take on that handle and to lean in a bit. So, let’s look at our six resources and strategies that we can utilize to move forward, Sandie. Let’s start with the first one here.

Sandie [00:04:08] Well, the first one is to begin to alert your community now that January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Now that’s here in the United States. But internationally, many countries have a focus day or a week or even a month. And if your country doesn’t, because I love it that we have listeners in 148 countries, Dave. So, if you don’t have one, you can join us in July for the United Nations World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. Start there because it gives you an opening point, a response point, right in your community that is timely and leverages the visibility from press releases from task forces and the White House, federal organizations, state, local. We can all begin to increase our volume all at the same time.

Dave [00:05:17] And we’ll have one of our later items on the strategies, on the sixes, some specific things you may jump in on. But, you know, Sandie is just starting with the awareness first of making the invitation to others to know that this is happening and wherever you are locally, to begin to raise your awareness on what’s happening within your local community, organization, or country.

Sandie [00:05:40] So step one is plan now to be part of the national focus on prevention. And another good strategy is to use our Ending Human Trafficking podcast survivor tool kit. There is a lot of conversation and appreciation for survivor-informed and survivor led. So I want to challenge you to go to the survivor tool kit. If you’re an over achiever like me, you’re going to listen to all 11 or 12 survivor voices in that tool kit, episodes we’ve done with survivors. Or you may want to dial it back a little bit and choose a survivor voice to listen to each week. But either way, begin to intentionally listen to survivors. Do this on your commute or when you’re doing your walk around the block or your run around the track.

Dave [00:06:47] Indeed, this is our second strategy to choose a survivor voice a week or two. Grab that survivor toolkit. We’ve had many voices over the years from survivors here on the podcast. We have one coming up again in our next episode. Sandie, for those who would like to grab that survivor toolkit, what’s the best way to get access to it?

Sandie [00:07:10] You need to come to endinghumantrafficking.org and look under resources where you’ll see the survivor toolkit and you can download the whole thing or you can just do one at a time.

Dave [00:07:26] Perfect. So we’ll have that on the website, as always. A great starting point for you on utilizing the resources we already have here on the website and of course within the podcast. Speaking of practical strategies, number three is one of my favorite because it’s so useful and so practical in so many ways for something we’re all doing: shopping.

Sandie [00:07:46] That’s right. And it’s a way to involve your kids. You don’t want to give your kids the survivor stories to listen to, Dave.

Dave [00:07:53] Yeah, exactly. But the Sweat and Toil app is a wonderful starting point for age appropriate conversations. We’ve talked about it on the show before, but for those who haven’t heard it, Sandie, what is it and what’s the value in thinking about it from a standpoint of trafficking?

Sandie [00:08:10] It’s an app you on your phone or any kind of device that uses Android or Apple apps where you can actually look at the products that you’re purchasing that seem just normal products, but find the hidden human trafficking, labor trafficking that might be evident in that product. And it’s based on more than a thousand pages of research. It gets updated regularly and we’re able to determine if the chocolate that you’re eating is tainted by child labor. And I was recently in a training where former Ambassador John Cotton Richmond cited evidence that 80% of the chocolate we eat has child labor in it. I don’t want that chocolate. And Sweat and Toil app will help me identify when the supply chains have been carefully vetted. And I can share this with the kids in my life and begin to start teaching them and encouraging their empathy for those in other spaces, other countries, other continents that are vulnerable to being exploited in human trafficking.

Dave [00:09:40] I always use the app when I’m in the produce section and I’ve learned to check buying blueberries because there’s, I can’t remember exactly where, there’s one or two places that if the blueberries came from this country of origin, that there’s a concern. And I always make sure to check it, because you can tell right on the label where did the produce come from? And I make a choice based on that app. And as we’ve talked about before, there’s maybe not as a starting point, but there’s also an opportunity to potentially if you see the kind of products in the store that you frequent and the people who are running that store, that organization, there’s also opportunities for conversations to start prompting some of the what are you carrying? What made you think differently as far as your supply chain, just based on what you’re seeing on store shelves? That’s a more of an advanced thing, but it’s an opportunity to really go beyond just awareness and make a difference in a way that is accessible for so many of us.

Sandie [00:10:34] You’re being a voice, Dave. The next thing on our list is the most exciting for me.

Dave [00:10:41] Indeed. Number four. Yeah.

Sandie [00:10:43] So you all know that my friends Shayne Moore and Kim Yim and I released a book called Ending Human Trafficking: Strategies for the Church Today. We did that in April. We are back with the Ending Human Trafficking book challenge. And there are three ways to participate in the challenge. And we want your feedback. We want you to tell us how it goes. We want to know how many people you recruited to join you. And then when we hear back from you on feedback at endinghumantrafficking.org, we’ll report back in in February. So here’s the three challenges. First of all, the first one is read the book in 31 days. So we’re linking this to January, National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. You’ve got 31 days to read the book. The second challenge is send the book to three people. And actually, that’s going to be a great Christmas gift. And I this morning talked to our publishers at InterVarsity Press and they have given us a discount link effective from December 12th, 2022 to January 31st, 2023. And that code is EHTlearn. So when you go to IVPress.com, you’ll get 30% off plus free shipping on the paperback book. That’s a great gift idea.

Dave [00:12:33] And it’s such a great starting point from beginning to end, although there’s never truly an end of course, Sandie. So many of the things that are in the book, of course we have talked about on the podcast over the years, but we’ve talked about them in different times, in a different order on the podcast. The book is a very great starting point for beginning to end. What are the key things I need to know? And particularly as you invited us, Sandie, if you’re getting together others who also share the heart you have for this and want to learn more. What a great starting point for a group or with a partner to begin to go through the process of learning together and then deciding what’s our piece, what’s our handle to take on more. And that is a wonderful starting point for again, going beyond awareness of starting to study the issues, be a voice, and ultimately helping us to end human trafficking.

Sandie [00:13:28] And that is the third way you can participate in the book challenge. We want you to put together a group, read together, discuss. We’re putting out a leaders guide. It’s not lengthy, it’ll be short. And you can arrange to do it once a week. Or you can do pattern where a couple of people have already started this, where they do a chapter a week and there are eight chapters. You can do it online or in person. We just want to know how that goes. And there is so much power in doing things together, collaboration. And so we will want to follow what happens with your group as you join together to read Ending Human Trafficking.

Dave [00:14:22] So all of that is under number four, the Ending Human Trafficking book challenge. So we’ll have all this linked up, of course, in the episode notes, and that leads us to the fifth of the sixth, Sandie. And this comes back to what we talked about earlier of the prevention month events that are upcoming. And as you mentioned, we do have listeners all over the world and I know that we have many listeners here on the West Coast of the States. And so there are a bunch of events that if you happen to be here or if you happen to be traveling in this area in the next month or two, that are coming up locally that the Global Center for Women and Justice is involved with.

Sandie [00:15:02] And this can kind of be a springboard for you to think about what you can do locally if you aren’t nearby. We’re going to start January with a Saturday morning, January 7th, train the trainer with the facilitators guide and everything for Ending Human Trafficking for the book. And it’ll be here at Vanguard from 9 AM to noon on January 7th. Then on January 11th, which is a single awareness day recognized nationally. And so we’re going to be screening a new documentary produced with Homeland Security Case Study and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children called “Sextortion.” We’ll be screening that here in Orange County at Vanguard. At the same time, it’s being screened at the Pentagon January 11th. You can find the information in our show notes. On January 18th, you know we’re big proponents of collaboration. We don’t have to do all of it right here at Vanguard. We’re joining our Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force at Cal State Fullerton. And with that, our Live2Free students will be on hand working with youth from middle school to high school, and that’s January 18th. And then we’re not just staying home, we’re going up. My coauthor, Kim Yim and I, to the Bay Area in partnership with BAATC, Bay Area Anti-Trafficking Coalition. And we’re going to be leading two very unique events that are being piloted in January. One is with a group of generous and hungry faith-based donors who want to learn and want to financially support and help strengthen local and global anti-trafficking efforts with a more savvy framework. They want to understand where great work is being done, and they want to be able to call out smoke and mirrors. The idea that there are sometimes organizations that raise a lot of money and have a great website, but you can’t really figure out what is being done that is lasting, accountable. How do we evaluate? And that’s going to be part of that project up in the Bay Area, San Francisco, still the West Coast. And then finally, January 28, the last Saturday of the month, we are hosting at Vanguard Smart Families, Safe Kids, 11 to 2 PM. The link will be in the show notes. Our goal is to equip families, moms, dads, grandparents, uncles on how they can make sure the kids in their community are safe. Much of the resources at that particular event are being uploaded to our Web site, so you’ll be able to see versions of the content for the parents as well.

Dave [00:18:36] I love your invitation too. If you’re not local, not going to be on the West Coast of the states, that this may be a inspiration, a starting point for you if thinking about what would be the kinds of things you’d be doing during awareness month, the activities, wherever you are locally. And you may start with something like a screening of a documentary, a movie or a starting point, or getting the book and having an event around that. Any one of these could be a starting point if there are not currently events happening around you. And of course, we’re going to have these all on the website, endinghumantrafficking.org. And speaking of the website, that’s actually a great starting point as well for the sixth resource, which is the Podcast Challenge Toolkit. This is exciting, Sandie.

Sandie [00:19:22] So, Dave, you’re going to love the 31 day challenge tool kit. Many of our listeners have already read the book. They are avid followers of the podcast. And now here’s an opportunity to invite your friends to join you in a podcast challenge. 31 days of podcasts. There is a toolkit called 31 Day Podcast Challenge in our show notes and in our resources so that you will be able to introduce your friends to 31 days of podcasts that will help them be equipped right now to move beyond awareness to action.

Dave [00:20:14] All of this you can find at endinghumantrafficking.org and our invitation to, as always, is just to start. Don’t try to do all six of these. Choose one. What’s the handle that feels right to you right now? Maybe it is downloading the Sweat and Toil app. What a great place to start. Take it on your next shopping trip with you. Use it with your kids or other people that you’re shopping with as a learning tool for awareness about what’s happening. Maybe it’s grabbing the book and reading it yourself or maybe connecting with others. Maybe it’s joining us at one of the events live or downloading the toolkit. But pick one that’s right for you. And if you do that, it gets you moving on beyond just awareness, of course, but actually really taking action for yourself, for your community, and helping support the good work that we’re all trying to do to end human trafficking through the Global Center for Women and Justice.

Sandie [00:21:10] I’m especially encouraging people not to do this alone. We say this all the time in fighting human trafficking. Don’t go it alone. Find somebody else. Invite somebody else into your space to join you in this challenge. Every time I start a January New Year’s resolution, Dave, I need to be accountable to somebody else. Or I’m going to say, well, I don’t think I really meant that. So find somebody else. The benefit of that is you’ll bring new talent, new energy, new passion for ending human trafficking in our lifetime.

Dave [00:21:54] And so much of this is about partnership as we talk about so often on the show, right, Sandie. The partnership starts with each one of us of finding the partners, our friends, our family, the people who care about this, our organizations, our faith based communities. There’s partnership opportunities everywhere. It doesn’t need to be two large organizations coming together. It begins with just a single conversation, a single relationship, two people reading a book together. That’s our invitation for you to start. And if you do that, what a wonderful starting point going into the new year that supports all of us in ending human trafficking. Sandie this is normally the part of the show where I have resources for everyone, but boy, we’ve covered a lot of resources already. So I’ll just simply say the starting point for you is to go over to endinghumantrafficking.org, find the episode notes for this episode, episode 288, and you’ll see everything detailed there. And we’d love to hear what you decide to do. If you take a moment to drop us a line and share with us what you are doing, where you began. We’d love to know. Feedback at endinghumantrafficking.org is the very best way to get that message to us. And Sandie and I are wishing you well as you get started on taking action here in these next few weeks.

Sandie [00:23:06] We can’t wait to hear from you.

Dave [00:23:09] And Sandie, we, of course, will be back again in two weeks for many more conversations. Survivor voice coming up in our next episode again and we’ll be into 2023 with new episodes. Have a great day, everyone, and we’ll see you back in two weeks. Take care.