Dr. Sandra Morgan and Alan Smyth, Executive Director of Saving Innocence, discuss his newly released book, Men! Fight for Me: The Role of Authentic Masculinity. Together, they go in detail into the four pillars of authentic masculinity and the significance of men’s role in the fight against human trafficking.

Alan Smyth

With over 25 years of nonprofit management and experience, Alan Smyth joins the team to cultivate strategic partnership on behalf of Saving Innocence reporting directly to CEO and Founder Kim Biddle. Most recently, he served for 14 years as the Regional Director for Young Life in the Greater Los Angeles Region and before that he was an Area Director for Young Life in San Francisco Bay for 11 years. During his tenure, Alan was responsible to fundraise for and oversee an overall annual operating budget of 4 million dollars as he led a charge to expand work into South LA. His responsibilities included recruiting, hiring, training & supervising staff as well as volunteers. Additionally, Alan executed hundreds fundraising events, strategic planning activities and developed marketing strategies that proved successful for Young Life in Los Angeles. Alan got his Bachelor of Communication Studies from San Jose State University.

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Transcript

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 256, Men! Fight For Me, with Alan Smyth.

Production Credits [00:00:09] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:30] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

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

Dave [00:00:38] And this is where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, today, another guest with us who has just doing some incredible work on supporting all of our efforts to end human trafficking. I’m so glad to welcome Alan Smyth to our show today. He serves as the Executive Director for Saving Innocence, an anti-human trafficking community-based organization focused on the recovery and restoration of child victims of sex trafficking. Alan is the co-author with Jessica Midciff of Men! Fight for Me: The Role of Authentic Masculinity. Alan, we’re so glad to have you with us today.

Alan [00:01:23] Oh, great. It’s an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

Sandie [00:01:26] Alan, I actually was on my phone and saw the live reel that you did with Saving Innocence when your book was released. And I was so excited, I immediately downloaded it on Kindle and reached out to you. I was also wanted to mention to our listeners that the forward is written by Ambassador John Cotton Richmond, who served as ambassador until this last year. So, welcome from me. I want to start this conversation with what attracted me to this book. The concept of authentic masculinity in the fight against human trafficking. What brought that concept into your sphere of passion?

Alan [00:02:31] Yeah, that’s a great question and that really is the spirit of the book. It really it’s a book for everyone. There’s a lot of the book. Most of the book is not talking to men specifically; it’s human trafficking survivors telling their stories. But there is very much a specific challenge from me, man to man and my male voice challenging men to step into an authentic, as opposed to a counterfeit or cheapened or diminished version of masculinity, which is sold to us every single day, thousands of times on all of our media devices in the movies, TV, song lyrics. It’s a watered down, cheap and destructive, hurtful version of masculinity. And the reason why that was so important to bring into the human trafficking world is, as you mentioned in the intro, I’m the executive director for Saving Innocence, and we focus our efforts on child victims of sex trafficking. And it didn’t take very long when I came to Saving Innocence six years ago before I realized the reality that most, and the biggest part of this problem is caused by men. Most of the buyers are men. Most of the traffickers are men. Men are the biggest part of this problem. And then the next sort of revelation, if you will, when I started going to trainings and whether it was a county workshop or whether it was a Saturday afternoon at a church awareness event they were putting on in their community, there was almost no men there. And so that was really botherin...