You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice. This is episode #316: Government Agencies as Equippers and Influencers Against Trafficking, My name is Sandie Morgan and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Kirsten Foot is back today to discuss how government agencies leverage tools and strategies developed by Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking, the organization she leads to counter human trafficking. Kirsten has a Ph. D. She’s CEO and Executive Director of BEST, Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking, and she leads their initiatives to educate employers to prevent human trafficking, and provide pathways to safe employment for trafficking survivors. BEST offers employer consulting on anti-trafficking strategy development and implementation, video based and in-person training, services, and advisement on communicating about human trafficking with employees, customers, vendors and the public. Kirsten has been a guest on episode #111, and episode #310. Kirsten welcome back.

Thank you, Sandie, it is always good to talk with you. I learn things in our conversations too, I’m just excited to have this chance.

So I’ve been trying to reconsider the approach that I take to educating my community, and from the beginning of the podcast, a lot of my goals were designed around providing resources. But as I kind of lean into this new season, I want to understand better the “why”, and my students can look up the “what”, they Google it before I can get it out in my classroom, but the “why”, that is the message. So I want to start today with the “why” for BEST, particularly in the context of serving government agencies.

Well, glad to have the chance to speak to that. It’s a big question, but it’s actually relatively simple. Because if we grasp the fact that human trafficking is ultimately a crime of greed, it’s human rights violation, it’s exploitation in so many ways, but the “why” of human trafficking: Why do people traffic other people? it’s greed. Because they profit from it. Then that means that our efforts to prevent it need to be dedicated to making the activity of human trafficking much more costly to the traffickers, more expensive financially, more difficult, more risky for them. It’s simply too easy. So prevention needs to be thought about as making it much harder for traffickers, and government agencies have such a strong role to play in that. Often, I think people think, “Well, you know, government agencies and trafficking, it’s law enforcement.” That’s what government does, that’s the main thing government does and law enforcement is absolutely essential in countering human trafficking. And so are our government-provided social services. So much of the support for survivors of human trafficking comes from government sources in the federal acts, and other state resources. It’s never enough, but there is government funding for survivors. But my emphasis in my position within BEST is looking at government agencies as employers, as managers of significant amounts of public property, buildings, parks, facilities, libraries, transit systems, infrastructures that have been built with public dollars and that they steward for the public. They have government agencies at the city, county, state and federal level, have so much opportunity for influence over what happens on their properties, through their workforce, and the way...