At the beginning of the new year are two important awareness days: January 11 is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day and February 1 is Freedom Day. Sandie and Dave provide tips, resources, and encouragement for you to make plans at the beginning of the year to raise awareness about human trafficking, engage your community, and do something to end human trafficking.

Key Points

Resources

[Note from the Ending Human Trafficking podcast team: This episode was recorded in 2011 so the contact information provided is no longer accurate. Please refer endinghumantrafficking.org/contact for the correct contact information to get in touch with the EHT podcast.]

Transcript

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 18, recorded in November 2011. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:28] And I’m Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:29] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. And Sandie, we had forgotten to do this upfront on the last show, so I’m going to say it upfront right away that if you’re tuning into this episode for the very first time and checking out this to learn about how to end human trafficking, welcome. We’re so glad to have you. We’re glad you took a few minutes here to tune in to us and hopefully that this time will be very valuable to you in learning a bit more about this issue of really studying this issue, being a voice in ending it, and ultimately, making a difference. And if as you’re listening, I think you’re going to have questions that will come up and we take questions all the time, Sandie. And so we want to encourage you to reach out to us with questions. And of course, if you have feedback on the show, things you’d like us to cover in the future, or things you have questions upon from past episodes, you can reach out to us any time. Actually, three ways you can reach out to us by email at [email protected]. Or you can call the center directly Sandie and either talk to you live or you can leave a voicemail.

Sandie [00:01:45] 714-556-3610, extension 2242.

Dave [00:01:51] And the third way is, for those of you who love Facebook, you can go on to Facebook and just do a search for Global Center for Women and Justice. You can like us on Facebook, and if you do that, you’ll actually get a couple of things. One, you can ask questions right there on the page of us and interact with us. You’ll also get all the announcements about different shows when they post in an addition, a whole bunch more too that the center’s up to and resources and links. So there’s a great conversation that’s going on there with lots of information for you. So I encourage you to check that out as well. And today, Sandie, we are actually going to be talking about some things that are in place nationally to raise awareness around human trafficking and it being toward the end of the year here now of we’re actually looking forward to January and February because this is a big time of the year for those of us who care strongly about advocating against this issue, because there’s a lot of awareness activities coming up that we want to educate this audience about. And also, I want to be educated about too because you’re much more an expert on this than I am. So I’m looking forward to learning from you.

Sandie [00:02:53] Well, I always plan for January 11th, because January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. And as you know, Dave, you know, I came back from living overseas and when I discovered human trafficking was right here, I was very happy when they passed the resolution that we would actually have a day where we look at human trafficking in our own country. So January 11th. And here in Orange County, we started calling it O.C. 111. And it’s a big event. Everybody plans it every year and we ramp up our are faith based groups, our NGOs, our schools to talk about what is human trafficking and our media covers it. It’s really been a very powerful mode of awareness. But I think in listening to people over the last year, we want to do more than just awareness. So I’ve been thinking, how do I phrase that. I think I want to do January 11th, National Human Trafficking Awareness Plus, plus. Do something. Something that would make us all more responsible, would give us a way of taking some sort of action...