Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast, this is episode number 268, Rebuilding the Brain, with Dr. Anne Light

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

Dave [00:00:28] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:33] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:36] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, I’m so glad for us to have today, again, another expert with us is going to help us to really think about things so proactively and to look at things from a standpoint of research and in today’s case, of course, a bit on health care and medicine. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Anne Light to the show today. She is a pediatrician specializing in childhood trauma. She earned her M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed residency training in pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital with a focus in trauma and emergency care. Until 2015, she worked as a pediatric provider within the Massachusetts General Partner System and led several multidisciplinary collaborations to improve patient care and trauma outcomes. In addition, she served as the executive director of a nonprofit to optimize early learning in children aged zero to three. In 2015, she joined the Orange County Social Services Agency, where she serves as the medical director and is working to create interdisciplinary programs to support children and families. She is currently leading and developing the WE CAN Coalition: Working to End Child Abuse and Neglect. This group has more than 150 members from across Orange County organized into nine task forces in order to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of maltreatment in children, families, and communities. Annem we’re so glad to have you on the show today.

Anne [00:02:06] I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you.

Sandie [00:02:08] I remember when I first met you at the first meeting of the WE CAN Coalition and you had my heart at the very beginning because with a background in pediatric nursing, prevention is always my preference. So I’ve been so privileged to be able to be at least on the edges of what you’re doing here in Orange County, and I appreciate you so much.

Anne [00:02:36] Well, thank you, Sandie. I’ve been thrilled to have your partnership. You’ve done some amazing work and I’ve been privileged to be a part of it.

Sandie [00:02:43] So one of the things that absolutely–you were an Ensure Justice speaker that got so much response from our attendees–as you helped us understand trauma in the brain, especially for children. And I’ll put some links back to some of those presentations in our show notes. But today we get to talk about the other side of this and the hope that comes with this. So let’s start with a quick overview of ACEs. What are ACEs and why is it important?

Anne [00:03:25] Absolutely, great question. ACEs stand for adverse childhood events. When you look at the initial ACE study, it really was about maltreatment in children and by maltreatment, I mean abuse and neglect. So there was physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, physical and emotional neglect. And then there was this category called household dysfunction, which was severe mental illness and a parent incarceration. A mother who was treated violently. Substance use. Severe substance use by a parent. And in the initial study, they did look at divorce. I always caution folks about divorce because that initial study was done in 1985 with folks who were in their mid-60s. Was really asking about the divorce rates or the divorce events in the 1920s. And as you can imagine, if you got, if your parents got divorced in the late 1920s, early 1930s, the odds that there may have been mental illness, incarceration, violence, substance abuse in that family was a lot higher. So really, I think it’s those those core ACEs, and some have been added on since then, but those core ACEs are really about abuse and neglect in the family. We know from our studies in Orange County and nationally that more than 60% of families who are coming into the child welfare system struggle with mental illness and substance use. And so the odds that that household dysfunction is impacting the child with some form of neglect, I think is very high when you look at that brain development.

Sandie [00:04:55] There’s a huge intersection with that and children who are more vulnerable to being trafficked either for labor or for sex trafficking. So let’s start talking about the brain. I am every day, everything I read about the brain just inspires my imagination and fills me with hope. And we’re right here at the beginning of 2022, lots of people are discouraged, pandemic issues, mental health concerns for our kids. And so understanding this from an image perspective, you have shown us pictures and we are on an audio interview. So we’re going to have to write a word picture for people as they listen. And you’ve shown us pictures of a healthy brain and a brain that did not develop as it was designed and its shocking because of those empty spaces. Can you describe that for us and tell us what it means?

Anne [00:06:08] Yeah, absolutely. And I would actually back it up a step, Sandie, because I think it’s I think actually the brain is phenomenal. I adore it. I’m a total total geek. And I think actually the brain is designed to give you exactly the outcome you need or exactly the outcome it thinks you need. So when those brains are developing differently in the context of trauma, it’s not necessarily maladaptive during the trauma. Right? If you’re a young child growing up in a violent household, stopping to think deeply about complex intellectual problems is going to slow you down. What you need to be able to do is rapidly assess when you hear a footstep on the stair, be alert to it, assess it quickly, figure out if there’s imminent danger and get yourself out of that imminent danger. So in fact, as the brain is growing, it is building structures and it’s building structures that it thinks are going to help you. And in fact, they do in the moment. It’s just that once you’re outside of that dangerous home environment, we wish that you had a little bit more development in some of those other, more cognitive stop, think, solve areas. So so basically, what’s happening again is, you know, the brain is fantastic. It’s really very plastic. And so when you’re born, it’s really pretty rudimentary and it’s over the course of your life that you grow these neurons and connect them, and it really happens in response to your experiences. We know from looking at your Romanian orphans who were kind of put into a room and not given a lot of interaction that if you don’t interact with the child, they will not develop these brain connections, right? It’s not an automatic development that goes off track in maltreated children. It’s actually a development that we nurture in healthy children. And some of these neglected children are not getting that nurturing or, again with violence, their brains are gearing more towards a figh-or-flight response and getting really, really good at that to protect them from danger. So what we see when we look at brain scans is actually pretty dramatic. What you see on normal, what we call normal or healthy development is that in response to stress, there’s a lot of activation in the frontal lobe. I’d like people as they’re listening to put their hand up, put your right hand up, curl your thumb in and wrap your fingers around it exactly as you would not want to throw a punch, right thumb on the inside, fingers on the outside, sort of in a fist like structure, that thumb is going to be the amygdala, the deep brain structures. And its response is really about fight, flight, or freezing, and freezing is a big one in individuals who’ve been trafficked or maltreated. And then on the outside those four areas of the brain, your four fingers are going to correlate to speak, solve, stop, and socialize. And if you if you kind of imagine speak, stop, solve, socialize for each finger and the fight on the inside, you really get a general picture of what the brain is doing. And so in cases where children are given a loving and nurturing home that’s safe and protected, those speak, solve, stop, socialize areas become very robust. And the fifth is very tight, so they wrap around that fight or flight. And when emotional triggers hit the child, they’re able to rationalize their way through it and calm that amygdala. Calm down that fight-flight-freeze response. In children who are maltreated, what we see is that the amygdala, that fight-flight was very, very large. And in fact, the neurons in the frontal lobes, which is that speak, solve, stop, socialize the fingers, those die off. So it’s almost as though your thumb is very swollen and your fingers are coming out and spread and becoming very spindly. And without the connectivity, without that closed fist, the brain can’t communicate back and forth. So even if you’re able to try to think through your predicament, you can’t biologically affect the amygdala, which means you can’t biologically slow your heart rate. You can’t slow your respiratory rate. You can’t control the dilation of your eyeballs. With a healthy, robust system, the feedback from those frontal lobes can calm the amygdala again, biologically decreasing some of the steroid secretion. But in a in a maltreated child who’s had brain development that really prioritizes that fight-or-flight response, they’re unable to put the brakes on once the emotional response gets started, and again, that’s biologically not necessarily in terms of how they’re interacting with others.

Sandie [00:10:34] And that reminds me so often of stories I’ve seen, even media representations of kids acting out and someone yelling at them, What were you thinking? And I think, what you’re saying is they aren’t able biologically to get to that thinking part of your brain.

Anne [00:10:58] Exactly. And I think that, you know, it’s all it’s all relative. I think we want to be clear that people do have agency, but I just think that what they’re working with is more limited. And so it’s a lot harder if you don’t have as much in the way of frontal lobe development and you have a lot more amygdala development, it’s going to be a lot harder to de-escalate when you become anxious, when you become stressful, when you become overwhelmed. And I do want to be clear, that happens to all of us actually, Sandie. So it’s it’s interesting, there’s something called amygdala hijack, where again, the amygdala gets triggered and it actually does burst the blood flow away from your frontal lobe. So it does this not to stop you from thinking, but because it’s decided if there is a tiger coming at you, right? Thinking isn’t going to help, what’s going to help is running away or going up a tree. And so what it’s doing is trying to pull the blood flow away from the front of your brain and send it to your heart, your lungs, your large skeletal muscles, your circulatory system so that you can react very quickly. But again, what that means is that you’re not sending as much blood flow to the frontal lobes. It’s harder for those frontal lobes to actually get the oxygen and the glucose to function as best they can. And you know, I have done talks with thousands of professionals, and when we were in person back in the day, I used to say, you know, raise your hand if you’ve had a bad day. Now raise your hand if you’ve made a bad choice on that bad day. Not something huge, but you had an extra slice of cake because you were stressed, you snapped at a loved one, right? You excuse yourself early from something, so like, I just can’t handle this, I got to go. Those little things, almost everybody’s done them. We almost all have a time when stress causes our amygdala to really secrete a lot of steroid hormones. And when that cortisol is high, we want to eat an extra piece of chocolate cake, we want to have an extra drink of alcohol. And in fact, it’s a very human reaction to do so. So I think it affects all of us. It’s just individuals who’ve been in a traumatic situation, and it’s not just children with maltreatment. My very best friend’s husband is in the military and was with the 101st Airborne for a long time. You know, any sort of traumatic situation is valuable to retrain yourself to really hone those fight-or-flight and decrease the stop, think, solve. And then the challenge is as you change your environment, how do you change your brain functioning? How do you change your reaction? The brain, while plastic, doesn’t change quite that fast, and I think that’s where you end up in trouble.

Sandie [00:13:25] Well, and a long time ago, actually not that long ago, we thought we were sort of stuck with what we have. And so we felt bad for, like some of my young people that I work with who did come from those situations where they saw violence against their mothers and all other kinds of forms of neglect and maltreatment, that now we had to help them accommodate to their trauma and PTSD. But there’s new science about brain plasticity, and I’d like to have kind of an update on how the brain recovers.

Anne [00:14:06] Absolutely. I think that’s a great, a great point. And you know, I often when I do this slide, I sort of ask people, you know what percentage of folks who have, let’s say, an ACE score of six or seven who’ve seen a lot of this maltreatment, be it neglect or abuse, or a lot of problems in the family. What are the statistical odds that their brain has been impacted? And in fact, it’s very, very high. It’s like 998 out of a thousand, right? So almost 100 percent, which is pretty crazy. Now that could be a speech delay, doesn’t have to be something that is is necessarily emotional, but oftentimes it is. And yet, with those high ACE scores, people can go on to have incredibly fulfilling lives. So I want to be really clear that this ACE score is not destiny, that the brain changes are not destiny. The brain is designed to help you. And just as, you know, my best friend’s husband who went to Afghanistan and I guess he was like twenty five had some dramatic brain changes within Afghanistan. He can come back and rewire on the back end, and it’s interesting. We always sort of expect that of veterans that they can wire and rewire. We tend not to expect that of children. And I do think you’re right, Sandie. There was this old school thought when I went to medical school, at least, that you grow up, you get you get a brain that fully grows till you’re about twenty five and then that’s it. And from there on, you just shrivel into oblivion. But thankfully, that is not the case at all. The brain, like everything else, is growing and developing your whole life, right? Those neurons are changing over. Within our whole body, we get about one billion, with a B, one billion cells per hour.

Sandie [00:15:41] Wait, wait, wait, wait. I don’t want somebody who’s driving to miss two things in here. Thats B with a billion every hour. Not once a month. Every hour. Oh my gosh. OK, go ahead. Because that is like, I want that to be a headline somewhere.

Anne [00:16:00] Yes. And in fact, you know, as it turns out, in the brain, although there are a lot of cells, it’s really about where they go. There are small regions in the brain that if you can dramatically increase the neuron density there and activity there, you can start to control that amygdala function. Calm it down. You can have huge impacts on how you feel. Again, I want to be really clear that that that folks who’ve been through maltreatment, it’s not just a social change there. Biologic changes, right? You can measure their stress hormones and they’re very high in response to very small stresses. And so any of us with that, with that size amygdala, with that kind of flooding of cortisol in our system would want to lash out or be angry. Perhaps, you know, seek something like substances or food to try to calm the the high level of cortisol in our system. And so I think understanding that there are areas particularly you can build up that will help to rebalance the brain can be really helpful in terms of seeing that optimism right and that there’s absolutely a way to use the brain plasticity to your advantage. You’re never done. You can always keep growing.

Sandie [00:17:14] So this is kind of if I try to imagine going to the gym and having a personal trainer so that I can strengthen parts of my body. This is the same idea of they will go where you use them. So how do I strengthen those weak areas and integrate them more with my amygdala and other brain structures?

Anne [00:17:44] Great question. You know, I would actually back it up a step, Sandie. I would say the first step is to start to rebalance the blood flow in your brain. Why do I say that? Well, there’s sort of two parts. Rebalancing the blood flow and getting something called brain derived neurotrophic factor. OK, so blood flow is pretty simple. Imagine you have a garden, right? And you want to grow tomatoes or thats a hard one to grow from seed, you want to grow kale. OK? And you don’t want to grow weeds, so you need to put the kale in the ground. And again, we’re already getting the the cells every hour. You know what we do with them remains to be seen, but they’re being seeded, the grounds being seeded. What you want to do is make sure those things grow, so you’ve got to water them, right? You got to prepare the soil and you’ve got to water them. And if you’re really feeling generous, maybe you put in a little bit of compost fertilizer Miracle-Gro. Okay. So it turns out that the blood flow is like the water, right? It brings the oxygen, it brings the glucose and brings the complex molecules that these cells need to grow and flourish, OK? And so as I mentioned, when you have very strong amygdala development, you can over time get less blood flow in those frontal regions of the brain and more blood flow preferentially going to the amygdala. And that’s going to be a problem because it means as you make new neurons in every part of your brain, right? The ones in the amygdala are going to stick around and grow almost like you’re you’re watering the weedy part of your yard. Instead of watering that that little kale plant you want to grow. What you want to do is shift the blood flow or shift watering to the frontal lobes. And so one of the most powerful ways to do that is actually meditation. I get a lot of questions about meditation. I kind of study it from a neurological perspective, so I don’t have a feeling about what type is best. It should feel kind of hard. It should feel like being constantly distracted and pulling yourself back to focusing on the moment. And if you’re doing that, that act of focusing is actually the act of kind of pulling yourself towards an area of your brain that focuses on redirection and awareness. And that is the area you really want to have seeing that increased blood flow kind of water or prime healthy neuron growth and development in those frontal lobes.

Sandie [00:20:00] I have been working on some of those mindfulness meditation strategies, and you are so right. I get so easily distracted, but you’re encouraging me that that’s like turning on the water faucet for the good veggies.

Anne [00:20:19] It is. And it’s and it should be. I mean, honestly, Sandie if you, you know, if you’re the kind of person that can pay attention beautifully in the moment. That’s fantastic for you. But it is much, much, much, much better to sit for five minutes, let’s say, and be constantly frustrated that you’re distracted, but recognize your distracted and bring your brain back. Each of those moments of recognition, awareness, and redirection is like a bicep curl for that frontal area of your brain that can control the amygdala. And what you’re really doing is not necessarily enjoying the meditation, because I will tell you, I personally don’t enjoy meditation. I do it, I don’t enjoy it. But what you’re doing is a bicep curl, right? It’s just like, I don’t necessarily love going to the gym and lifting weights, or now that I’m at home with the pandemic doing push ups, I don’t love doing pushups. What I like is when my daughter says, Pick me up, mom, I can toss her in the air, right? That’s why I’m doing it. And so I think for the brain, it’s the same way. You don’t have to love meditation. You have to see it as an exercise that’s going to build that frontal lobe so that when you hit a stressful situation, you can actually take a deep breath, redirect and decrease the amount of cortisol your body secretes in response to a stress. And you can see this in controlled trials, right? There’s this great trial where they take people, and for 30 hours over four days, they put them in one of two groups. One group gets stuck in a lecture hall, learning about how great meditation is. The other group actually meditates, okay. So you’re only talking four days, 30 hours. They do a stress test at the beginning and a stress test at the end, and it’s very simple. It’s something like, Oh, here’s a bunch of puzzles to solve. Each one should take you about two minutes. They’re really easy. Well, they’re unsolvable problems, right? So it’s not a horrible stressor, but it’s enough for people to get a little anxious, especially if there are other folks in the room pretending to get the answer right? Right. This is part of the stress. So what they find is that everyone has sort of more or less the same baseline of stress. But after you’ve gone through those four days of meditation, the amount of cortisol you secrete, right, so the measurable amount of stress hormone in your saliva is going to be about, it’s hard to quantify, but let’s say 30 times less than it is in the folks who just learned about how great meditation is. So again, the benefit isn’t in the meditation itself. The benefit is in changing your brain to be less reactive so that when stress hit, you don’t feel the need to go face down in the chocolate cake, right? You don’t feel the need to have an extra glass of wine to get through dinner with your in-laws. You have those tools in your holster to kind of calm your body, even in times of external stress. You don’t get as stress as fast and you respond a lot more quickly to kind of that talking yourself through the process, right? Because we are all going to encounter stressors. That’s just part of life. And so to the degree we can respond, I think we really set ourselves up for success.

Sandie [00:23:13] OK, so rebuilding the brain after trauma? Are there some best practices? We we listen to people starting nonprofits wanting to help abused children, human trafficking victims. What are some best practices for recovery from that kind of trauma? And does it also take advantage of this one billion new cells every hour?

Anne [00:23:43] Absolutely. In fact, there great studies that show the, most out of the Department of Defense, that show that just like if you go to the gym, you’re going to have to work at it for eight to 12 weeks before you start to see the muscles change and then you’re going to see functionality a little later. They have shown that when you’re doing therapy, your brain changes first and then you feel the benefit thereafter. So to a certain degree, and we don’t do it every day because it’s thousands of dollars per person to run one of these scans, you can actually do scans. You start to see changes in the brain before the participants really starts to see the positive behavioral outcomes, right. So you might feel the distress you might have, let’s say night terrors are horrible nightmares, right? Those brain changes happen before your nightmares start to decrease. And so it’s really those brain changes that are going to control and help assist you in healing. So there are a couple of different ways to do it. The two best therapies are trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Without going into too much of the nitty gritty of each, and Sandie, if you want me to go into the nitty gritty, just back me up. Each of them is really focused again, if we put our our right hand up, we curl our thumb in, we roll our fingers on top. Both are really focused on counteracting the effects of trauma. So really not nourishing the amygdala, letting it kind of fall back to a smaller baseline and really strengthening those fingers. So stop, speak, solve, socialize and tightening them around the amygdala so there can start to be a connection between the two and you can start to feel emotional, but but actually be able to continue to get blood flow to the frontal lobes and start to intellectually work through some of the problems as opposed to existing in the state of amygdala hijack, right, where you’re so flooded with emotion, it’s really hard to think concretely and logically about what’s in front of you.

Sandie [00:25:48] OK, so we’ll put a link in the show notes to some resources on trauma focused CBT. What about EMDR?

Anne [00:25:58] So EMDR? Oh, and let me just go back to trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy. You know, the thing that I love most about that is, again, it’s a short term rewiring. But what they have shown with randomized controlled trial is that not only the kids get better, more quickly and more completely than controls, but the benefits last at least two years. So two years is as long as they followed it out. They didn’t have funding to do more than that. But again, if the therapy is a couple of months and the benefits two plus years to me that suggest they successfully rewired that, that brain with the therapy. Now eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is fascinating. The first time I heard about this was right when it was starting, and I said, What, are you crazy? It turns out it’s really doing the same things in the brain but what’s amazing about it is it doesn’t necessarily require the participants to describe in detail their experiences to the therapist, and that can be really helpful for someone who’s had really overwhelming trauma. It may be really hard to talk about it. Talking about it may trigger a lot. And so one of the things you can do is the therapist can engage the client and basically, you’re actually sort of following the therapist finger with your with your eyes as it goes back and forth like a metronome or the pendulum honor and an old fashioned clock. And that sounds like, well, how is that helping me? But it’s actually you’re engaging all those frontal lobe areas and also your occipital lobe where your vision is based to track that finger, moving back and forth to predict where it’s going to go, and forcing yourself to stay on track with the eye movement while the amygdala is active, again its going to force some blood flow into those frontal lobes. It’s going to change the dynamic of how the amygdala is regulating the frontal lobe blood flow, and over time, you build in more and more detail and questions and you can go a little deeper. But it’s a great way, again, we put our hand up to really shrink that thumb and tighten those fingers around. And that’s and that’s really the goal of all neurologic rewiring after trauma, whether it be childhood trauma or a PTSD from another experience.

Sandie [00:28:10] Wow. Dr. Anne Light. It is always encouraging for me to have conversations with you, and I’m going to be more intentional about inviting you back for more conversation on rebuilding the brain and how we can be very proactive in the lives of our children in our community from a prevention perspective, as well as our expectations for the future for our kids.

Anne [00:28:40] I love it. Thank you so much for having me, Sandie. It’s always a privilege. I always have so much fun talking with you. And we cover such great stuff. I love it.

Dave [00:28:49] Thank you so much, Anne and Sandie, for this conversation. Sandie, this is usually the time in the show where we talk about the resources that are going to be on the show notes, and of course they are. So if you go over to endinghumantrafficking.org, you’ll find all the resources there, not only for this episode, but every episode. And in addition to that, it’s the new year and we have something new to share with all of you that we’re beginning this year. And before we do Sandie, maybe you might give us a little bit of background on what’s leading to this new announcement.

Sandie [00:29:24] Dave, I am so honored and humbled by the people that listen to this podcast. Our goal is for people to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference. And we started out over ten years ago, and now we’ve grown to where we have listeners in 148 countries. We’re in the U.S. Library of Congress. We have the opportunity to offer free education in places where we never dreamed we would ever be present. So as we’ve thought about that, about sustainability, how do we make sure we can maintain the quality and the long term availability? How can we expand to meet increasing numbers of questions and requests for resources? And how do we support more resources for people? And that’s where we found ourselves as we were ready for 2022.

Dave [00:30:38] Indeed, and we are pleased to announce a new opportunity that we have starting this year. We’re bringing a new way for you to actually support the work of the Ending Human Trafficking podcast and of course, the work of Sandie and her team at the Global Center for Women and Justice here at Vanguard University. We are expanding our community of advocates and we’re inviting you to become a patron. And the way you can do that is actually through a program that many of you are familiar with called Patreon. Patreon is a wonderful service that helps fans and supporters support the work of those who are doing creative work in the world and getting the message out there. And Sandie and I have begun work to actually set up really a supporting process through Patreon so you can get access to new content on the show. Early access to some of the Ending Human Trafficking podcast episodes. Some bonus episodes. And some exclusive resources and toolkits that will be available here in the future. Plus, in addition to that, it’s a great way to continue to support the work that we’ve been doing through the Ending Human Trafficking podcast and the Global Center for Women in Justice. And I should mention here that we’re not changing anything about what we’re already doing. All of the work we’re already doing with the podcast will still be available freely. We’re going to continue to work on airing episodes as we have for the last 10 years. This is for those who would like to support us in a more substantial way. Just in addition to all the things that we’re already doing, it’s pretty simple and affordable. You can become a patron for only $5 a month and get access to all the ending human trafficking patron benefits. And the easiest way to get information is to go over to endinghumantrafficking.org. You will see a link on the website to Patreon, and that will get you an opportunity to go in, see all the details and actually an invitation to join us as a patron. For those of you who may support others on Patreon already, you can go over to Patreon and also search for Ending Human Trafficking and you’ll see all the options there as well. And Sandie, we’re really excited to begin this, to continue to support our work, to continue to support the content creation. I should also mention Sandie, you know, you have been supported for years through your salary at Vanguard University through the center. I have been volunteering my time and will continue to do so for the last 10 years to support the show. So this isn’t coming to us directly. It’s really to continue to invest in the programing, the work, the content creation of the work Sandie has been doing and her team all this time. And I’m really excited to see what happens with this Sandie. So thank you so much to you and the entire team for doing the work to begin to put this together and a huge thank you in advance for those of you who decide to support us through Patreon. And even if you don’t, thank you for all that you have done to support us and passing along the show. We are grateful for however you’ve supported us and Sandie. It’s really an exciting thing to start, isn’t it?

Sandie [00:33:49] I am totally excited. I am grateful to all of our listeners, and I am especially grateful to the team you keep mentioning, Dave. We cannot do this alone. And we appreciate all of the people that come on the show to give us interviews and to spread this knowledge hub with others and share these resources so that together we can all be part of ending human trafficking.

Dave [00:34:21] And that’s the place to go if you’d like to find out, of course, more the notes and resources from our conversation today with Anne and or if you’d like to look into supporting us through Patreon as a patron. Go over to endinghumantrafficking.org. You’ll see all of the details there. And as always, we will be back in two weeks for our next conversation. Sandie always a pleasure. Have a great day.

Sandie [00:34:45] Thanks.

Dave [00:34:46] Take care, everyone.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Ambassador John Cotton Richmond to discuss the intersection of business and human rights. Together they look at how the conversations in board rooms is shifting to discussions on their supply chains, exploitation, and other impacts that their business has on the communities around them.

Ambassador Richmond is an attorney and diplomat focused on ethical business, human rights, democracy, and rule of law. He served in the country’s highest position dedicated to combating human trafficking as a U.S. Ambassador where he led U.S. foreign policy in the global fight for freedom. As a Partner at Dentons, Ambassador Richmond helps companies keep their supply chains and workforces free of human trafficking. He was named one of the federal “Prosecutors of the Year,” after a decade successfully trying complex police misconduct, cross-burning, neo-Nazi hate crimes, forced labor, and sex trafficking cases across the country. Ambassador Richmond is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, frequent expert for the United Nations, and frequent speaker on justice, freedom, leadership, faith, and vocation.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast, this is episode number 267, The Intersection of Business and Human Rights with John Cotton Richmond.

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

Dave [00:00:31] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:36] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:38] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, today we have with us not only an expert, but a dear friend in the work that we’ve been doing to end human trafficking. I’m so glad to welcome John Cotton Richmond back to the show. His career has taken him to the front lines in the global battle against human trafficking as a partner at Denton’s, the world’s largest law firm. He focuses on the intersection between business and human rights. John advises companies on how to keep their supply chains free of forced labor and their workforces free of sex trafficking. Before joining Denton’s, the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed John, and he served as the U.S. Ambassador to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons from 2018 to 2021, serving in the nation’s highest ranking position dedicated to human trafficking. John led U.S. foreign policy related to modern slavery and coordinated the U.S. government’s response to the crime. Mr. Ambassador, always a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome back.

John [00:01:41] Thank you. It’s great to be with you.

Sandie [00:01:43] I’m really excited about this conversation today, ambassador, because a lot has changed since the last time we had a conversation. And I want to kind of start right there. You’ve transitioned from public service to the private sector, and I want to understand how that changes your perspective and especially the kinds of questions you’re asking now.

John [00:02:11] Hmm. It’s been a remarkable journey. You know, I started off in the private sector years ago before my family and I moved to India and really began doing work in the area of forced labor and sex trafficking. So now I’ve worked for the private sector. I’ve worked for two different NGOs and as well as in the government, working both as a federal prosecutor and then serving as ambassador. And now I get to work in a large law firm again trying to carve out a new area around business and human rights. And it’s been such a privilege to get to view the issue from so many different perspectives, and it has changed some of the questions I’m asking. But one of the things that I found that’s essential regardless of the seat that we currently hold, is to make sure that we’re reviewing the issue through the lens of the individual because it’s individual people whom traffickers are forcing to work or compelling to engage in commercial sex acts, and they’re the ones who are bearing the massive weight of exploitation. And so as as we study these issues, when we consider legal or policy interventions or how to provide care. I think the idea that grounds us in reality is the individual people who need freedom and these are people that you’ve met that I’ve met. They have hopes and dreams and fears. And I think it’s important regardless of where we’re sitting, to resist dehumanizing them by rolling them up and just one giant collective statistic or naming them as a generic population, but really keeping our focus on the individuals. As I’ve moved from government into the private sector again, it’s caused me to recognize that businesses are not the adversary. Traffickers are our adversaries and businesses can play an important role in pushing down through their supply chains. Hope and good and prosperity that could actually benefit workers all over the world. And we want to make sure that their businesses both bear the burden of accountability, but also see the opportunity to do what’s right around the issue of human trafficking.

Sandie [00:04:18] I really loved that statement, and it reminds me of the conversation that I had a few months ago with Ben Skinner, who made the point that holding companies accountable for their actions is important. But just holding them accountable and having punitive things tied to that isn’t going to change the big landscape. Worksites get shut down, the companies move and then workers are in a worse situation than they may have been before. So what else do we need to understand about making businesses collaborators in the ending human trafficking sector?

John [00:05:02] You know, I think it’s an it’s important for us to remember that it’s a whole of government approach. It’s a whole of business approach. We need all these different pressures coming together around the same issue. So we do need to hold businesses accountable and sometimes they do need to shut down their operations or start sourcing from a different vendor. But the reality is if they stop sourcing from a vendor that could actually do great harm to individual workers that are at the worksite. But of course, if they’re being forced to work harms already occurring. And so we can’t just allow that to continue. So I think the businesses are important partners. Where they’re knowingly profiting by participating in a trafficking venture, they ought to be held accountable. They ought to be punished. But the reality is we can’t just shift burden from governments who are underperforming to businesses and expect the problem to be solved. It’s going to take governments stepping up and actually doing the things that their laws require them to do and to do them really well, both in holding traffickers accountable and caring for survivors. And we have to make sure that businesses are held accountable when they’re in the wrong, as well as using the power of their commerce and their procurement to actually be a force of good in this work. It’s not going to be one or the other, it’s going to be both. Wow.

Sandie [00:06:20] So I was introduced by a colleague who works in corporate social responsibility to some new frameworks that are emerging. They’ve been there. I just didn’t know much about them, and now I’m reading everything I can get my hands on about this idea of ESG, environmental, social governance. And that governance perspective, I have a tendency to see as governments like in the Trafficking in Persons report; How is this government doing? But the governance in a corporation, in the boardroom? That sounds like where your perspective is going to have a great deal of impact because companies want to reduce risk, right?

John [00:07:15] Absolutely, and we’re seeing a huge change around this. In some ways, I think the new ESG framework, this three letter acronym that no one really knew four years ago and now everyone’s talking about, in some ways it’s helpful because it’s focusing some attention on important issues, in other ways I feel like it’s so broad that it can feel overwhelming to people. But what is good is that we are seeing boardrooms for big companies around the world, as well as medium and small sized companies around the world, paying attention to issues of people in a new way. And how does how does their commerce, how does their business actually impact various stakeholders up and down the supply chain and value chain? So I think that attention is good. But what we’re seeing is a shift from corporate social responsibility or just corporate philanthropy, that is businesses that are trying to, in a sense, engage in a little bit of corporate charity, do good things, invest in a few projects. We’re seeing it shift into business operations and compliance, a shift from CSR to the C-suite and general counsels paying attention to this because there are new risks, both from investors paying attention. We’re looking at a bunch of new SCC disclosures from the Security and Exchange Commission for publicly traded companies about what they’re doing on all sorts of issues from environmental restrictions, as well as human rights, as well as diversity and inclusion. And so people are paying attention. And then we’re seeing some new frameworks that really started in California, in many ways, around disclosures through the California Transparency Act and then ultimately in the UK and Australia Modern Slavery Acts that required companies to disclose what, if anything, they’re doing about forced labor and their supply chains. And now we’re seeing another new evolution kind of building on the disclosure framework into the diligence framework in Europe, where we’re seeing not just a requirement to disclose what, if anything, you’re doing, but a mandate on companies to map their supply chains to know if their human rights and environmental abuses within their supply chains, and then hold those companies accountable for what’s happening in their suppliers. When that takes effect, that will be a massive transition.

Sandie [00:09:29] Well, and I’m glad you mentioned our California Supply Chain Transparency Act. We were really excited when it passed in 2010, but we were also disappointed because there were no teeth. So it seems like we’re maturing to a point where that will be the next step.

John [00:09:49] Yeah, I think that’s right. And there was criticism of the California Transparency Act as well as the Modern Slavery Acts. But I really see this as a crawl, walk, run progression. I don’t know that we’d be where we are right now in Europe if California hadn’t taken the lead with with the basic disclosure requirements. And so I think they’re building on each other, but we’re also seeing  accountability coming in the form of benefiting financially cases. So the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000 included corporate accountability from the very start. It said that anyone who’s just benefiting financially or otherwise from engaging in a venture that has trafficking in it can be held accountable. And we’re seeing more and more civil suits being brought against companies in federal courts around the United States that are trying to hold companies accountable for knowingly engaging in trafficking activities.

Sandie [00:10:39] So the public is very aware of supply chains right now, especially here in California, where we’ve had to deal with the pollution impact and the market impact on supply chain that our block ships are queued outside our ports. We had an oil leak because of that. So the community is in a state of wanting to know how to respond to this and when they find out that there is some sort of connection to human trafficking, and particularly labor trafficking, they’re kind of surprised because they were looking at it from the perspective of inconvenience. They can’t get the rubber gloves you posted on Twitter about the withholding orders there. And so how are we going to leverage that community, that public outcry about these kinds of supply chain issues? I think it’s an opportunity we don’t want to miss.

John [00:11:46] I think it is too, Sandie. I think that making sure that there’s not forced labor coming into our ports, that is goods that are tainted with forced labor, coming in our ports is critical. I’ve been very encouraged that since 2015, we’ve seen a significant uptick in the number of times that Customs and Border Protection have blocked goods where they believe that they were made by forced laborers either entirely or just in part by forced labor. And that’s crimping supply chains, and it’s making it more difficult for companies to operate. It’s removing the predictability in the certainty of the just in time procurement. But then we also have just natural economic pressures that are happening that are interfering with supply chains. So I think raising these issues, making sure that people are aware that whether it is the goods being transported or it’s the people laboring on the ships themselves who are catching fish or moving goods on ships, making sure they’re not engaged in forced labor. We want to make sure that the companies that are participating in forced labor activities are held accountable, and I think raising the issue via supply chains could be really powerful.

Sandie [00:12:56] So when you’re talking about the intersection of human rights and business, how can I communicate that in my community when they’re talking about the backlog in supply chains? It comes up in nearly every conversation in our community. It’s so close to home.

John [00:13:19] In one way is I think people can be a voice. They can raise their voices either individually or collectively to businesses and ask them, What are you doing to make sure that there is not goods on the shelves, parts and produce in your products that were made by forced laborers? Just asking the question, demanding that companies pay attention to this can create a huge impact. I think we also need to be ready to bear some inconvenience. Perhaps it will take longer to get goods for a period of time. But I think it’s going to be important that as we build out prosperity around the world through commerce, which is what has happened, that’s lifted so many people out of poverty, that we make sure that we don’t do it on the backs of exploitation.

Sandie [00:14:05] Hmm. So I interviewed recently someone working in the fishing industry in Ghana who found out that rescuing kids who were being used to fish didn’t actually make any difference in the long run, unless there was the lift out of poverty for the whole community, and new business models and families were supported. And so what started out as a child rescue mission turned into a community development issue. And I’m hearing some of that from the things that you’re saying, what I’ve been reading on your website, which everybody you can find more information on ambassador’s website, johncottonrichmond.com. And I have to tell you, he already has an easy download, 10 Things Everyone Should Know that I recommend that you start with as you start going into this studying the intersection with human trafficking and business. So you just mentioned poverty, and I’d love to hear your ideas on how businesses will be part of that growing awareness.

John [00:15:32] You know, I appreciate that Sandie. You know, we know that poverty is one of the biggest vulnerabilities that is out there, that a community can suffer, that an individual can suffer. We also know that the head of the World Food Program, who just won the Nobel Peace Prize last year estimated that the global shutdown orders in response to COVID have driven half a billion people who weren’t in poverty into global poverty. That is, we have more vulnerable people now than before we started this pandemic, which means that traffickers who are seeking to target vulnerable people have far more people to choose from. In a very real way, traffickers are fishing in a stocked pond. They can find vulnerable people quickly. And I think it’s also important to note that vulnerabilities don’t cause human trafficking. There’s lots of vulnerable people, people in poverty who are human trafficking victims. It’s not causal, but it is correlated. We know that traffickers target vulnerable people because they believe they’re easier to control. They’re easier to compel to engage in illicit business. But businesses that are operating for good, which is most companies, most companies don’t want forced labor in their supply chain. They’re just not sure how to go about figuring out if it’s there and if it is, what to do about it. But traffickers are interfering with markets. Traffickers are interfering with commerce and business because they’re not paying their laborers. They’re not paying them at all. They’re not paying them a fair wage. And they’re gaining an unfair advantage in the marketplace with companies that are doing it fairly and paying a market wage. And so what traffickers are doing is not a form of business. It’s counter to business. And we want business to flourish because we know that businesses can generate prosperity and that can lift people out of poverty, you can give them the opportunity to have a good job to provide for their families and to educate their children in the future. So I think business has an incredibly important role to play when it’s operating well, when it’s not operating well, when it’s knowingly engaging with forced labor, it needs to be held accountable. But I think we want to make sure that we still hold governments responsible as well, because only governments can actually use legal coercion to stop a trafficker from harming an individual person. And governments are not doing well at this, in a very real way they’re underperforming. We’ve seen a a global reduction in the prosecution of traffickers in 48% since 2015. Almost we dropped almost in half. And during that same time, governments have identified more victims than ever before. We’ve actually seen a 40% increase in victims identified since 2015. So we have this major imbalance, that is we’re identifying more victims than ever before, and we’re holding fewer traffickers accountable than ever before. And this is a risk reward scenario for economically motivated traffickers. They see very low risk of accountability, and they see a very high opportunity for illicit return for profits on the backs of exploitation. So governments need to do their part and businesses need to be held accountable when they’re involved in the trafficking ventures. When they when they’re knowing about it, we need all of these things to come around and then we need the development piece that you talked about. We actually need international development. We need good communities, families, and opportunities for people to have hope that there is a better future. And when we get all three pieces that puzzle with businesses as well as governments as well as communities involved, I think we’re going to be able to have a significant impact.

Sandie [00:19:06] I’ve been looking at like the ILAB report that included a significant increase in the number of child victims of forced labor. And the concern that you mentioned as far as plummeting into poverty as a part of the pandemic. How do you think we’re going to pull out of that as we emerge from the pandemic?

John [00:19:35] That is a million dollar question. I wish I had a quick answer that would just solve that problem. I think it’s going to be a number of things. I think it’s going to require huge investment in the economies that are surrounding the communities that have been most, most damaged by the pandemic and the response to it. I think it’s going to require building out the infrastructure in these communities. And when I say infrastructure, I’m not just thinking about water and sewer or electricity. I’m thinking about the public justice delivery system, the opportunity for rule of law. For companies to be able to operate with clarity and predictability. For individuals to be able to redress grievances, to go to the police when a crime has been committed, for disputes to be sorted out. We need rule of law. Where rule of law can come, we can see huge opportunities for development. And we need to build out the infrastructure around social service delivery systems to make sure that we can actually get the care that survivors need to the individual survivors and tailor it to that, where we’re not shoehorning survivors into pre-built programs for a generic individual, but we’re tailoring a protection program just for them based on the trauma they experienced in the way they responded to it. And so I think it’s going to require a big investment, a big investment in infrastructure across the board. But I think we have to be open to doing things a little bit differently. It’s not foreign assistance in the way that we’ve always done it. We need to move beyond just flooding the field with money and instead looking towards actual impact that those investments can have that can produce real results.

Sandie [00:21:13] Wow. So you said a lot there that we could just jump off to, but one of the things that really caught my attention was this idea of shoehorning survivors into programs, and we just did a podcast on human-centered design that I recommend people go back and listen to to understand how important that is in our survivor care agenda. The comprehensive description that you just gave us, a rule of law and how we measure impact, all of those things require a community that’s going to collaborate from absolutely every sector. And I’m curious how you with your new address basically in international law and your global perspective, how are you seeing opportunities for hope in change?

John [00:22:18] You know, I think that hope comes from knowing that individuals and businesses can make a difference when they’re operating out of goodwill and wanting to see a difference. If you look at the last 20 years, it’s been all about getting consensus that trafficking is wrong. And we’ve done an amazing job. I don’t think we should overlook it too quickly that every country in the world now has a law against human trafficking. That was not inevitable. That should be cheered and celebrated. We should erect a monument of some sort to remind us of the hard work that that took to get for the first time in all of human history. We have global consensus that the buying and selling of people, that the renting of bodies is legally wrong. That’s incredible. And we have all these new tools in every country in the world, international instruments. We’ve got all sorts of agreements, proclamations. All these are tools in our toolbox. And I think the challenge for this next generation and the reason we can have hope is that now we can take those tools and begin to use them, to begin to come up with new and creative ways to actually take those tools and begin to apply them to the problem of freedom where people do not have it, to the problem that traffickers have created by taking vulnerable people and exploiting them. And we’re seeing that; we’re seeing a professionalization, I think, within the anti-trafficking movement where we’re going beyond kind of our initial responses that were driven by anecdote and passion. And we’re thinking about it in a more strategic way, in a more collaborative way where we’re engaging different strategies in different places, where we’re trying to understand metrics better and measure results. This is going to be an exciting 20 years. When we think about actually taking the tools that we’ve created and using them for good, whether it’s the whole business who’s accountable for benefiting, whether it’s to deal with supply chains, whether it’s to take it from kind of where we’re banning imports around the world, how we’re thinking about ESG, how we’re thinking about making sure that consumers are aware of the supply chain, whether it’s cobalt in our batteries or forced labor in our chocolate consumption, we can actually begin to do something now. We’ve built a platform and now we can stand upon it to proclaim freedom for many. And I think that generates a lot of hope.

Sandie [00:24:37] You mention the chocolate and my students have been working on that kind of issue and the fast fashion for several years now. And what has really struck me is they are going out now and they’re in the business sector and they’re actually applying these principles. So when you talk about professionalism, will you speak to students in any school, any university, whether undergrad or grad? What do you see as their role in this next 20 years?

John [00:25:14] I think students have a huge opportunity, particularly you mentioned fast fashion and chocolate, all these different things. And one thing I would encourage students to know is that their desire for a chocolate bar or their desire for a bargain at the store is not the problem. The problem is that the traffickers, whether it be individuals or companies that are actually doing the exploitation. But if we could use the power of our procurement, if we think about our own personal procurement policy, what are we buying and what are the assurances we have that these companies are operating fairly for the workers that are making the products? I think that can have a very significant impact. We know that an individual student may not be able to get to West Africa or over to the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo or into Malaysia or any other country where we know forced labor is rampant. But they can apply pressure to their favorite brands. They can vote with their pocketbook. They can make sure that where they that they can make the most informed and thoughtful decisions possible. And I think that can drive a lot of change.

Sandie [00:26:22] I love it that the emerging leaders and a lot of these businesses have already been thinking about this, and I do believe that they will vote with their procurement dollars as well. So I’m encouraged by that. As we wind up, what is the one thing you have changed your mind about the most over this transition?

John [00:26:48] Hmm. Oh, it’s such a thoughtful question, Sandie. I think I’m still in the transition a bit. I’ve only joined Denton’s about six months ago, so I’m I’m still fairly new and thinking about this from different, another new perspective. But I think that one place where my mind has changed is understanding the importance of applying pressure from multiple sides at the same time. You know, normally we’re in one role at a time and we apply pressure there. But if we can actually apply pressure on traffickers operations from a business perspective, as well as from an advocacy perspective, from a governmental perspective, from and even from an academic perspective, just writing about this and understanding it. It’s going to take everybody doing all the things that are required at the same time in order to have a significant impact.

Sandie [00:27:40] Thank you so much. If you want to follow John, go to his website; tell us the website again?

John [00:27:47] The website’s JohnCottonRichmond.com and the social media handles just JohnRichmond1.

Sandie [00:27:53] Thank you so much, and we’re looking forward to hosting you here at Vanguard in February, and I’m sure we’ll have a great conversation there too.

John [00:28:02] It’s going to be wonderful. I’m really looking forward to it. And Sandie, thank you for your leadership over the years in this field. I’m so grateful for you.

Sandie [00:28:09] Thank you. I just like talking to people and finding out who knows what and sharing that with my community because I do believe we all have to do what we can as part of that collaboration. And I love the idea of pressure points from multiple perspectives, so we’ll start looking at more of that with our work at Vanguard as well.

Dave [00:28:36] John and Sandie, thank you so much for this conversation. I would encourage you to visit John’s website, johncottonrichmond.com And he’s got a wonderful resource there: 10 Things Everyone Should Know About Human Trafficking. Great compliment to what we’re doing here on the podcast. And of course, you can find that link and all the notes at Endinghumantrafficking.org. In addition to all of the past episodes and all the things we’ve mentioned in this conversation today. In addition, Sandie mentioned Vanguard University where the Global Center for Women in Justice is housed and our Ensure Justice conference is coming up March 4th and 5th, 2022. You can find details at gcwj.org/ensurejustice. And we will be back with you for our next conversation in two weeks. Thanks, Sandie.

Sandie [00:29:22] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:29:23] Take care, everyone.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Chris Field from Mercy Project in Ghana, an organization that works with the community through education and empowerment to combat labor trafficking and build stronger communities.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 266, Rescuing Boys Labor Trafficked in the Fishing Industry with Chris Field.

Production Credits [00:00:11] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:31] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:37] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:39] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, I’m so looking forward to this conversation today, like I am for for so many of our conversations because I learn something new and one thing I realized in preparation for today’s conversation about the fishing industry is I know very little about this industry. And of course, as we’ve talked about so often on the show, there’s so many different aspects of trafficking and it touches, unfortunately, every industry in some way. Today, we’re going to study the issues even more so we can ultimately be a voice and make a difference in all the work that we’re doing. And I’m so glad to welcome Chris Field to the show today. He is the founder and executive director of Mercy Project. He traveled to Ghana for the first time in August 2009 and has since been on a mission to bring new life to children in slavery, as well as empower those around him to make the world a better place. Chris and his wife, Stacey, have five children, and he is the author of Disrupting for Good and a Billion Hours of Good. Chris, we’re so glad to have you on the show today.

Chris [00:01:51] Dave, Sandie, thank you guys so much for having me. It’s truly an honor to be with you.

Sandie [00:01:56] Well, Dave, I already had one conversation with Chris and we couldn’t fit it all into a half an hour, so we’re going to dive right in and do our best today. Let’s start by reframing the word rescue. Chris, typically I imagine people running out of a burning house and the fireman running in to rescue any other occupants. But your definition is a little different. Can you expand on that?

Chris [00:02:31] Yeah, of course. I mean, first, let me say we’ve had as a community and as an organization, we’ve had dozens of hours of conversation around this word because we don’t want it to connote this savior complex of some sort and we’ve really struggled over the word. Is there a better word to explain what it is that happens in a community when children who have been bought for 20, 30, 40 dollars and fish 12, 13, 14 hours a day when they’re able to go back to their families and their source communities, their original community and begin going to school? How do we explain that in a different way? And because it’s not that dramatic fire burning and it’s not us, you know, showing up with our hands on our hips like, behold, give us your children. I mean, it’s like we’ve struggle with that word. And where we’ve eventually landed on this topic is when you think about where the children are today or where they have been, the ones that we’ve already helped in Ghana, they really do have the opportunity to be rescued from a certain life. And I think what’s beautiful about this is we’re not the ones doing the rescue. We are there and we are part of the process. But because of our community empowerment, it’s really the community that they’re working in that actually at the minimum gets to join arms with us and be part of rescuing those children out of this child labor and this child trafficking into the life that they deserve. And so that’s really how we look at that word; where are they and now, where do they get to go? And that’s what they’re really being rescued from, is a life with no hope and a life with no future into one where education and family and reunification and empowerment are the key elements instead of working all day on a fishing boat.

Sandie [00:04:53] Okay, so let’s start at the beginning of that very holistic process. And what’s the first thing that you do? Because obviously you don’t go scoop the kids?

Chris [00:05:06] That’s right. So when I very first went to Ghana, I was visiting another organization and I was very bothered by the process. I mean, I didn’t have any experience in this space, so it’s probably a little arrogance of me that I would, you know, dare to look at another process and think, Well, they shouldn’t do that. But essentially, people were buying the children out of slavery, which just created this black market of children. You know, the fishermen could buy low and sell high to these western organizations and they could, you know, make a lot of profit on this. That made no sense to me because as soon as those kids were out of the community, nothing had changed. The fishermen still had to find a way to fish, and they didn’t have any new tools.

Sandie [00:05:59] And where did they take those kids?

Chris [00:06:02] Well, in those cases, the kids were almost always taken to an orphanage, which was ironic because they’re not orphans. And so the whole system just seemed, it just seemed broken to me, and what bothered me the most was I just kept thinking, this is the opposite of sustainable. I mean, the problem, the reason the fishermen have the children is for labor. And if we’ve not solved the labor issue, if we’ve not solved the root issue of poverty, then the money they get from selling a child is only going to last them a short time and they’re going to be right back where they started. And so that was really the impetus to start Mercy Project over 11 years ago. And what we’ve done is go into these fishing communities where, by the way, approximately 75 percent of the traffickers were actually trafficked children themselves. So they grew up as little fisher boys and fisher girls on Lake Volta. And so they’re doing the only thing they’ve known how to do since they were five, six, seven, eight years old. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. And we go into these communities, we begin relationships, and our question for the people in the community is always a very simple one: how’s fishing going for you? And they always say it’s not going well. The lake is overfished. We catch less fish than our fathers, and they caught less fish than their fathers. And we say, OK, we know a better way to fish, and we would like to teach you that way to fish. But there is something else that’s important here. We don’t think children should work all day, and these children we see on your boats right now, small boys and girls with muscles that are overgrown because of the work they do. We think they should go back to their families, so we’re willing to teach you a new business. We’re willing to partner with you in doing aquaculture, cage fishing, which will actually grow more fish than you’re able to catch right now. But we’re only going to partner with you if you will voluntarily release these children back into their biological families and it’s a commitment your entire community has to make together. And if only half of you want to make it. We’re going to go find another community. And then that begins a lot of internal conversation. You can imagine some people think it’s a great idea. Some people think it’s a pretty bad idea. And this is where it’s really important that we’ve established a relationship with the chief and the elders of the community because if they can see the vision, they’re typically the most educated people in the community in many cases, if they can see the future, and it’s a better future with these cages than with the children, they can typically help the community understand that future. And so that’s what we’ve done now. 20 communities averaging in size three to 500 people and 207 children that have been voluntarily released by these villages, reunited with their biological families and all attending school now. Not a single one that has been retrafficked, which is something we’re really, really proud of.

Sandie [00:09:24] And I have so many questions about. So when you are taking a child that’s been released and reunifying them with their biological family, what does that look like because they came from a situation that was obviously very precarious?

Chris [00:09:43] That’s right. Yeah, it’s it’s complicated, as you can imagine, which is why I think people stick non-orphaned children in orphanages because at the surface, that feels more simple. In this case, though, we really believe in family, and we believe parents in most cases are the best suited to raise their children, especially if they have the tools they need to be good parents. And so what we do, we have investigators who go out and find these families, which is no small task. And once we’ve identified the families and we ask them, we tell them where the child is, the kind of labor they’re doing. In most cases, they have no idea the conditions their child is working in, how much they’re working. And they typically it’s many, many, many single moms whose husbands either passed away or left and they weren’t able to feed their children. They were struggling. And so they sent one to work on the lake so that the child could at least have food. That’s what the mothers tell us all the time. They said, we know if they were fishing, they could at least eat some small fish every day. And we say, OK, that is true. They do have food, but that’s pretty much all they have. They’re not going to school, and the mothers are typically surprised. They don’t have the clothes they need. They don’t have any of the things they need. The future is bleak, and we would like to reunite your family to bring your child home, but it’s going to take some hard work. Emotionally, it’s going to take some hard work and physically for you. We need to understand how you make money right now. And we need to help you become more stable. And so I have these amazing Ghanaian social workers all over the country. After the parents are identified and agreed for the children to come home, they begin working alongside these parents to help them stabilize the family and whatever. Whatever way that looks like, it’s various. Every family’s different, sometimes microloans. Sometimes it’s simple things like helping them find a more affordable place to live. Sometimes it’s helping them get their national health ID cards and other things like that. Government services that are offered that they’re not taking advantage of because they can’t sign their name or they don’t know which office to go to or they don’t have transportation. So I mean, it’s a really a holistic, like we dig in and actually, we don’t dig in, we get in the ditch with the families and come alongside them and become deeply entrenched in their lives and become friends. I mean, truly become friends with them. And so the first time the children meet their parents again after what’s usually been a couple of years is at a rehabilitation center where the children go after they’re rescued and they’re usually there three to six months. It’s Ghanaian run. The man who founded it was actually a trafficked child himself in Ghana, which is a pretty amazing story. And this is where the children begin to receive psychological care. They are able to talk about and process their experiences with people who can help them do that, have been trained to help them do that. They have a safe place to sleep. They can learn how to eat clean food, good food. They can learn how to drink filtered water. They’ve been drinking lake water for so long that many of them actually get sick. About half the kids that are rescued have some sort of preventable disease that could be life threatening if not treated. So malaria, bilharzia, all kinds of things. And so they get medicine. They go to the doctor and we get them healthy again, and it’s there at that neutral site that they get to see their moms and dads again for the first time. And it’s a pretty emotional scene to see a mother and a child reunited, or a father and a child reunited after a couple of years. And there’s a lot that’s not said that doesn’t need to be said in that first embrace. And it’s a long road and it doesn’t just go away. The children have been hurt and they’re confused, and they want to understand what happened. But that’s why our social workers play such an incredibly important role is that they’re trained and able to help navigate as the family comes back together. So then the children go back home a few months after that first meeting, and our social workers are there every step of the way: enrolling the children in school, walking alongside the parents, ensuring their financial stability, et cetera. And in many cases, doing parenting lessons and telling the kids to not be knuckleheads and just being an advocate and a friend to those families in whatever way that looks like uniquely for each one of them.

Sandie [00:14:30] So you mentioned some of the reasons why they, the parents hadn’t access to resources that were available because, you know, I go on government websites and UN websites and I know, you know, there are children’s rights to education and things. So it’s surprising to me that these parents can’t sign their names and then that that becomes a roadblock to actually getting the resources that they need. So is this something that then, you start teaching the parents more of those kinds of skills as well?

Chris [00:15:11] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, you take a place like Ghana where education is compulsory and it is paid for by the government, but that hasn’t always been the case. And if you’re from a poor family that needs you, quote needs you to labor in the fields instead of going to school, they’re going to have you labor in the fields. I mean, that’s how your family’s going to survive. And you know, we have this sense, especially in Western culture, in America where I am. It’s just like, we can’t even fathom a parent doing that, and we’re just so removed from what surviving looks like. I mean, it’s wonderful for children to do math questions and learn about science and to learn to read and write. But when you’re literally not sure how you’re going to eat that day, those things are not a priority, and even compulsory education, by the way, you can’t go to school if you don’t have on a uniform. And you have to have books. And you can’t go barefoot to school. And you can’t learn when you’re hungry and you haven’t had food in 24 hour. I mean, so it’s a great idea at one level to say, well, schools free, every kid should go to school. It’s like absolutely, every kid should go to school. We believe in that wholeheartedly. But we’ve oversimplified that a bit to believe that that just means any child can walk into a school naked and somehow be a thriving young student. And by the time we engage with the children, many of them have never been to a day of school in their lives. There are 9, 10, 11, 12 years old. They don’t know how to write their name. They don’t know the letters of the alphabet. They don’t know how to count to 10. And so, Ghana, specifically, places children by level instead of by age. So we have 12 year old sitting in a classroom with five year old’s, and it’s pretty demotivating just to be 12 and to see your peers on the playground and they’re like, Oh, it’s the boy that’s in KG. And it’s like, Oh, really? And so I mean, one of the things we do is we bring in private tutors from the day the child comes home to try to catch them up to other students their age because we don’t want them to be so demotivated that they stop going to school. But here’s what’s beautiful. We have kids who’ve taught their parents how to read, we have kids who’ve taught their parents the alphabet, and we have moms that say to us, I never believed my child would be able to go to senior high school. You’ve given me hope, not just for that child, but for all my other children. That what I never believed to be true, might actually happen for my family. And even just having a child enrolled in school with the proper uniform, with shoes, with books, with a tutor which cost about $40 a month, by the way, it’s a very low cost. That alone gives a parent such an enormous amount of hope that they didn’t have before. It shows them a future that they didn’t think was possible. And if they can grab on to just a tiny little bit of hope, it’s pretty amazing and how resilient these families are and can be just with that little piece of hope.

Sandie [00:18:28] So what I’m picking up in our conversation and looking at your website, which by the way, is MercyProject.net, I think, is sustainability is a high priority in every aspect of your approach. And so you mentioned in passing microloans. And I think as I’m processing this, that these kids will be vulnerable again if the parents don’t have a better income base. So how do you do family based microloans?

Chris [00:19:06] Yeah. So a lot of it is identifying those families where a micro loan is actually going to make a big difference. They’re running a business, but for whatever reason, they’re not successful. I mean, I have social workers have literally sat in the market with a mother with a piece of paper and a pencil, teaching her how to add up the income that she brought in, minus her expenses and saying, Listen, you’ve been here 10 hours today and you’ve lost 17 Ghana CDs. This business won’t work. You can’t do this. Something has to change; your expenses have to go down or your income has to go up. Is there a better place to sell? Oh yes, there’s this other place about a half mile away, a couple of kilometers where I might, they have much more traffic there. OK, well, why aren’t you there? I just always came to this place. OK, let’s go to that place and let’s see what happens. Or a small micro loan like one woman in particular. Names Rejoice. She’s a mother of four young children. Her husband passed away. And she had a little restaurant, little chop bar, little street food, and she was an amazing cook. People loved her food when they ate it. The problem was nobody ate it. She was in a terrible part of town for selling food because there was no disposable income in her town. So we helped her move to, we used a loan to help her move to an emerging part of the city right across from a huge construction project. Well, you know who works in construction? People that have to eat food and Rejoice’s food reminded those men of their mother’s food back home in their small villages. And then we also bought her up a dorm refrigerator so that she could keep her extra food overnight instead of having to throw it away. We also taught her how to buy in quantity, in bulk, so that she could drive her expenses down. So I mean, just two or three small things that nobody had ever taught her. Nobody ever explained to her. She had no way of knowing these things completely transformed her business, and she was cooking the same food. She was working just as hard as she was before. And now she’s profitable. And she actually surprised us and paid for her next year’s rent. You have to pay all at once a year in advance, by the way, in Ghana, which is very difficult for low income people. She actually paid her next year’s rent without us knowing it. And she came to us with her receipts and she said, Look what I’ve done because of you and because of your help and because you believed in me. I’ve actually been saving every month and I went ahead and paid my next year’s rent in full, and I didn’t even need you guys to help me again. And to me, that’s empowerment. Is taking what was already being done and just helping it to be a little bit more efficient, adding a little bit more of tools, adding a little bit more efficiency to it, helping it scale. And so that’s, I mean, that’s just one example, but we’re doing that across a number of our families where a micro loan for the family, you know, makes sense in that way.

Sandie [00:22:22] And you said social workers, social service integration is part of everything. So once those kids go to their families, you’re still involved in monitoring and making sure there aren’t any gaps that are going to put them back in the same space they were before. So how many social workers do you have?

Chris [00:22:49] We have nine social workers in Ghana, 15 total Ghanaian staff. So we have field workers, investigators and social workers. And the social workers are placed geographically around the country so that they’re within an hour or an hour and a half of each family, and they are deeply connected in that child’s community. If the child is part of a church, the social worker gets to know the pastor of the church. With whatever school the child is, the social worker gets to know their teachers and becomes another set of eyes and ears. Hey, if this child is having trouble, if this child is not making good choices, if this child’s having bad conduct, I want you to let me know. We need to have a conversation and they become really fully integrated into that child’s life. And so each social worker just has a group of children that are their responsibility based on geography, and they are able to take care of those kids in their families by being deeply ingrained in their lives. Now that does roll off at some point, Sandie. I want to be clear. I mean, we’re deep enough into this thing at this point that the cadence of how often those social workers are engaging those families definitely lessens as the child gets older and the family becomes more stable. So when they’re first reintegrated, social workers are there multiple times a week, and then it becomes weekly, and then bi monthly, and then monthly. And now we have children. They’ve been part of the program for six, seven years. They’re in high school now. Their parents have sustainable work. You know, we’re always seeing those kids a couple of times a year when we bring all the children together in that area for a regional celebration or a little Christmas get together or something like that, always still talking to them, text or phone calls. Because everyone has cell phones now in Ghana, which is pretty amazing, but still engage with them, but not having to actually physically lay eyes on them. And frankly, at some point, the children learn to advocate for themselves. 15 or 16 year old, although they’re not an adults, they’re able to express to their social worker if something’s wrong and if they need some assistance and they have such a deep and long lasting relationship at that point with the social worker that they don’t hesitate to say, Hey, there’s a problem. My parents aren’t doing well, and you know, they’re telling me I might need to leave the house again. It’s like, Well, OK, let let’s I’ll be there tomorrow. Let’s sit down and figure out what’s going on and see if we can’t solve this problem. So that turn happens at a different pace for every family. But it definitely happens over time.

Sandie [00:25:30] And how long did it take you to build a locally lead team like that?

Chris [00:25:35] Yeah, great question. So we were seven years into from founding, from the founding of Mercy Project, it took seven years until we had no Americans on the ground in Ghana and were lead by all all Ghanaians, specifically now a country director named Francis, who does a fantastic job. So that was a huge goal of ours, by the way. Day one, we said we need to work ourselves out of a job. This is not our country. This we don’t understand will never understand Ghana like the people of Ghana. So our job is to start the work, to figure out the problems, to listen, and then to empower the next generation of Ghanaian leaders to take over Ghana programs and then our role becomes supporting them strategically and financially.

Sandie [00:26:29] So that’s a great segway as we start to wrap this up. Tell us a little bit about the context, the fishing business, who sells the fish. Because there’s no one size fits all approach, and I know that there are people listening to this trying to figure out how to replicate it. And I just want to mention episode 247, Ben Skinner talked about perspectives on transformation in labor trafficking, and this sounds like a classic case study of what that looks like. So who sells the fish?

Chris [00:27:06] Yeah, so the community is already selling fish that they catch, and they just don’t have very many of them because the fishing is not great. So now they have lots of fish, and so the community already knows, the women already know how to salt the fish, they already know how to smoke the fish, they already know the local market, so a lot of what we do is just supply and demand 101. We help them understand, Hey, don’t take all these fish to one market. You can’t flood a market with 10000– By the way, 10000 fish is what we grow in each cage, tilapia. And so we said, Look, you can’t do a huge harvest and take 10000 fish to a market or it’s going to drive your prices down. There’s not enough buyers. And by the way, we learned a lot of these lessons the hard way. It would be, we could spend episodes of the podcast talking about the mistakes we’ve made. It’s easy to hear someone like this in 30 minutes and say, Wow, that sounds really nice. It’s like, Oh man, if I could tell you all the dumb things I’ve done in the last 11 years and ways I misunderstood or ways I underestimated how challenging something would be. I mean, I could write books on those stories. But the people already know how to sell the fish, now we’re just teaching them how to sell the fish smarter and with a higher rate. And honestly, part of this is them believing that the fish are theirs and not ours. So we had that problem at the beginning where they would go to the market and come back and we’d say how much you sell the fish for, and they would tell us some amount, and we’d say, Wait, that’s way below market value. What happened there? Like, well, the first person walked up and said they’d pay it, and I thought it’d be fine. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s more money than I’m used to having. It’s like, Oh, no, they’re still looking at this as like Mercy Project’s fish, not the community’s fish. And so we did a lot of work with them in goal setting. OK. What does your community need? What does your community lack? How could your community thrive? Well, we need a nurse. We need a health clinic. We need a school. We need a teacher. We need a motorcycle so we can get people to and from the hospital when somebody gets really sick or a lady’s about to have a baby. Like, OK, do you know how much those costs? No, we don’t know. Great. We come back. Hey, it’s this much. Guess what? That’s one year a fish. Do you think you guys can save this money collectively and sell the fish at the market, save this money and then buy that thing? One year from now, you can have your own school in this community for your own biological children who’ve never been to school either. They say, Wow, let’s do that. So now they know, Hey, we got to sell the fish at the highest value because these are our fish and we’re going for something. We want to set a goal, help them set goals that they’re motivated to chase. So it’s not our fish, it’s not our money, it’s their fish and their money and their future. And that was a big shift for us. It took a couple of cycles for us to discover that shift. And once we did, though, and they were excited about what that money could buy beyond just feeding their families, then it became really exciting because they were all moving towards that goal together.

Sandie [00:30:28] Wow. Chris Field, this has been an inspiring conversation, and I love it that you know where all 207 of those children are right now. And it seems to me that there are children in those communities that will never be trafficked because the communities are stronger. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today.

Chris [00:30:55] Absolutely. I’m honored to do it. Thank you for the work that you all do and thank you to your listeners who I know are, they care enough to be engaged on a hard topic like this. And our story in Ghana is not the story of all trafficking, but I hope it’s a reminder of how complex an issue this is. And I will go to my deathbed beating the drum that we must, we must match complex issues with complex solutions. And so I hope people will feel inspired in whatever space they find themselves in to figure out how they can create more sustainable solutions to match the complexity of the trafficking problems that they are most passionate about.

Sandie [00:31:38] That’s great, thank you.

Dave [00:31:40] Thank you both for this conversation. Sandie, you really zeroed on the word that I really appreciate about what Chris said so much. Just capturing the complexity of this and sharing the struggles. So much of this, there’s so many. There’s so much complexity. There’s so many variables for all of us in our work to end human trafficking. And I hope, as Chris said, that this conversation is yet another data point for each one of us to helps us to move forward and to take the next step. And I’m inviting you also to take the next step. If you haven’t already, take a moment to go online, visit our website at endinghumantrafficking.org. You’ll find all the links to the resources we talked about in this conversation to the work that Chris is doing, of course, and of course, all of our other episodes as well. Endinghumantrafficking.org for all those details, you can also reach out to us with any questions that have come up at [email protected]. A reminder that the next Ensure Justice conference is coming up March 4th and 5th, 2022. You can find details to register early at GCWJ.org/ensurejustice. Feel free to join us there for more details on the conference, you’ll be hearing more about that in coming episodes. We’ll be back again in two weeks for our next conversation. Thanks, as always, Sandie.

Sandie [00:32:57] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:32:58] Take care, everybody.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by three speakers from the AVODAH Collective, an organization that is partnering with churches to create space for women survivors of sex trafficking, young people, and families to find restoration through trauma-informed aftercare. They all discuss ingredients of the “secret sauce” to sustainable housing and aftercare.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 265 Sustainable Housing, Aftercare, and Existing Resources with AVODAH Collective.

Production Credits [00:00:11] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:31] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:37] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:39] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, today we have such a wonderful panel with us that is going to, I know, illuminate so many wonderful things that are happening with AVODAH and I’m so glad to introduce. We have three guests today, so I’m going to jump right in and actually share a bit about our guests. First of all, so glad to welcome Deb O’Hara-Rusckowski. Deb is a critical care nurse by training. After working in health care and the private sector for over 30 years, she now concentrates in public, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropy. She works in areas where she can combine her passion for health care, business, and faith. She’s the special advisor to the ambassador on human trafficking for the Order of Malta to the United Nations. I’m also glad to welcome Keenan Fitzpatrick to the show. Keenan and his wife, Brianna, live in Denver, Colorado, with four children, a fifth on the way. After spending eight years in fundraising work for anti-sex trafficking, Keenan and Brianna founded a 501(c)3, the AVODAH Collective, by acquiring land through impact investment to build its first location for care, modeled after the Metanoia Manor of trauma informed care. And I’m also so thrilled to welcome Sister Mary Anthony from the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus Order in Lagos, Nigeria. Welcome to all three of you to the show.

Deb [00:02:05] Thank you, Dave.

Sandie [00:02:06] Really good to have you here. And anybody who knows me knows collaboration is my favorite thing to talk about. So doing a panel from a collective seems like a dream. So I’m very excited. We’re going to start. I met Deb more than a decade ago doing a health care training out in New Hampshire, and Deb and I have stayed connected and collaborated as often as possible, so we share a unique concern about some of the challenges. So, Deb, what are the biggest obstacles in providing long-term housing and care?

Deb [00:02:56] Well, that’s a great question, Sandie. And what we learned after training so many health care providers–and their purpose was to train them how to identify potential victims and take appropriate action–was that once they were identified, there was what Homeland Security always said: there’s a desperate need for beds. What do you need? Beds, beds, and more beds. So if you identify and don’t have any beds or safe placement for these victims and to become survivors, well, they are just going to fall right back into and recycled back into the life. But this is very important, and it’s not just a national shortage of beds. It’s a worldwide shortage of beds. I’ll give you an example. When you and I first met ten years ago, there were six beds in all of New England. Six. Now there’s about, oh, 34 to 40, but that’s hardly enough when you see the numbers. So, not only is there a shortage of beds, but then the staff, you have a 4 to 12 average turnover every six to eight months. And then also 75 percent of the girls being trafficked in the U.S. come from the foster care system. That’s an important statistic. And then the last one I’ll give you is the six times higher rate of recidivism of a girl ending up in a short-term shelter rather than a long term. What I mean, if you place them right in a homeless shelter or something like that, those traffickers go right after the girls to get them back in the life. So for GSO, it was a natural progression, and I thank God that we, you know, God, put Keenan Fitzpatrick in my path and we were able to really complement each other, mine with the education and his forte with the safe homes. And that’s what really makes it a true continuum for health care and help for these poor souls that are caught in trafficking.

Sandie [00:04:56] So I’m going to turn to Keenan now because this idea of providing long term housing and care is so critical, but so challenging over and over again. I know people have big ideas. They have budgets that are so huge to raise the funds for the physical, to raise the funds to staff, and often face challenges of ever launching, ever getting off the ground. Or of sustaining the dreams and vision that they have. So Keenan, I am fascinated with the innovative solutions that you have been inspired to lead and your wife, Brianna. So tell us about how AVODAH Collective started.

Keenan [00:05:51] Yeah, thank you, Sandie. And, you know, after doing some work in fundraising and a little bit of rescue, I just like Deb learned that the biggest issue was sustainability with long term aftercare. There was some a wonderful act of providence that allowed me to meet a incredible group of religious sisters from the hospital of Sisters of Mercy. I shared with them a great call on my heart and a great desire to be able to provide care for these survivors. And they shared with me that they have been working at that time for about two years in Louisiana, caring for 13 minors who had been trafficked. And I was astounded, Sandie. The sisters were able to create a sustainability within the staff that no other organization had seen.

Sandie [00:06:42] Tell us why they were able to do that.

Keenan [00:06:45] Yeah. The sisters have made it very clear to all of us that, and I quote one of them, “I don’t care how much money you pay me. I would never do this work for a paycheck.” So the sisters are not doing this because it’s a job. They’re doing this because it’s a vocation. It’s a call. It’s a passion and it’s a purpose for their life. The sisters take three vows. They take a vow of poverty, of chastity, and obedience. All of those vows when they enter the convent, draw them to a place of service from a place of charity, not from a place of I have to do this or else I don’t get paid or I don’t have health insurance. They truly want to give of themselves. They want to serve with compassion and they want to bring those, the women of brokenness, to a place of healing. So I say there’s really two things from a faith perspective. These sisters, they have a lot of time built into their day for prayer and for reflection, and to draw from that source where they can then serve better. And the second is that they rely on each other. They have an incredibly strong bond, not only as friends, like coworkers can be friends, but more as sisters, as family. And so they’re able to serve from a depth that creates a sustainability and a longevity that that allows these women survivors to really understand that they are lovable, that they can be helped. Because when you see that that statistic that Deb shared that the 4 to 12 staff turning over every six to eight months, not only is it a financial and HR nightmare for the nonprofits, it also shows the survivors, not even the professionals can care for me.

Sandie [00:08:33] So then you’ve found an amazing. I think when we talked earlier that last week, we talked about the secret sauce of this amazing community and my background here in Orange County, everybody that listens regularly knows, I was the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force Administrator. And the Sisters of St. Joseph were among the very, very first to provide long-term, sustainable care for many of our survivors. But they had to have the right kind of facilities. So how did you get the land?

Keenan [00:09:18] Yeah. When we look at some of the strengths of specifically the Catholic Church, but on a more broad level, most Christian churches are very well positioned in different in almost all cities around the world with real estate that is not always productive or fully developed. So I’m talking about rectory or school buildings or baseball fields that are often positioned in very safe locations with easy access to public transportation. And the bishop or the local pastor are having a hard time filling that school or filling that parish. So, so the concept a couple of years ago was what if we actually start a relationship with some of these pastors and we work with them to repurpose those buildings to become safe homes for these women? You know, when you when you look at convents, Sandie, the convents are a perfect safe home. There is an industrial kitchen, there’s individual bedrooms and bathrooms, there’s beautiful gardens, and they’re often situated in very safe locations. So in trying to address that need of real estate, we, Deb and I started looking into different dioceses that we had connections with. Currently, our 24 sisters that went through a very intense training are now doing 30 to 90 day internships in five different dioceses in five different states across the US. So, we’re really able to leverage some of the strengths of the physical assets of different churches to provide spiritual renovation and healing for these women.

Sandie [00:10:51] So this way of repurposing property, is this a replicatable model?

Keenan [00:11:00] Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think first and foremost, what’s needed is a strong relationship and level of trust with the organization that wants to do something and the pastor or the diocese or the larger church entity that are in the receiving side. But drive around, you can’t go a mile without seeing multiple churches and buildings. Not all of them are full. Not all of them are being utilized to their full potential. And when you look at an issue as big as human trafficking, we have to be thinking bigger about how to solve it. It can’t just be a one off, here’s a home in one place and we’re doing good there. Now that’s wonderful. And thank you everybody who’s doing that. But this needs to be something that we can not only take nationally but internationally. And when you look in Europe, oh my goodness, the amount of church assets, physical assets that are sitting around empty. It’s thousands and thousands of beds that could be provided for women survivors. Pair that up with the unbelievable service that these religious sisters provide. You have, we do believe a secret sauce to be able to really make a big impact in this field.

Sandie [00:12:11] So this is replicatable and it isn’t just the beds. I mean, sometimes we count census, but it’s that home environment. It is, it’s their, becomes their home, their community as well. And I think in the past, I can go back and post some links, we’ve talked about how churches often they have educational classrooms that can be used after school to teach internet safety. There’s lots of ways to look at what your community’s resources are to see where they fit in the anti-trafficking space of prevention and aftercare and reintegration opportunities. Keenan, can you talk about how the reintegration part of this works?

Keenan [00:13:04] Well, I think that Deb mentioned a really important, important figure in that there’s a six times higher rate of recidivism when a girl ends up in a short term shelter versus a long term care facility. With our homes and with the organizations that we are partnering our 24 sisters with, we are seeking to have the survivors remain with us for 12 to 24 months. Now, 12 to 24 months is a long time for them to, first of all, rest and recover and feel like they’re safe and their loved. Sister is going to talk more about the service of compassion that they bring, they’re the mother, the mentor, and the friend to these women. From there, they’re able to then step into that process of job services and further education and to learn a trade and to learn what it means to have dignified work again. You know, another one of our focuses is that we want to be able to serve these survivors who have who are either pregnant or have infants. So we’re able to provide child care with the sisters being on site and in the homes. And that allows the women a little bit more freedom to be able to go out and find that job and to work without having the financial burden of having to pay for daycare so that that reintegration, and we really see this from the model of Metanoia Manor down in Louisiana, is really best accomplished when there is a longer term stay and that longer term stay is really only achievable when the real estate is easily accessible and the sustainability of the sisters loving presence is able to take its full effect.

Sandie [00:14:43] So how do you train everybody? Because I’ve had so many people, they want to volunteer. And so that sounds a little bit like this. You have people who are already interested and care, and now you have unpaid staff, but how do you qualify them? I notice that your model is trauma informed.

Keenan [00:15:08] Yeah. Well, I think maybe there’s two two things here. First of all, the sisters receive a full week of training on sex trafficking 101 and culturation into America. They learn from different survivors, and then they also learn from the sisters down in Louisiana who have been doing this work for four years. The most important piece of that training is really that all the sisters receive the highest level of trauma certification of TBRI. So we work with the state, with the governor’s Office of Texas, who brought in TBRI instructors to bring all 24 sisters through a three day TBRI training. Each of our homes is overseen by a clinical director who is an LPC. And we also have a program director in each home. When we look at volunteers coming in, every volunteer that’s actually going to interact with the survivors has to go through the local superior of the sister, as well as the clinical director and the program director to receive a level of training that would make it healthy and appropriate for them to be involved.

Sandie [00:16:12] So, Mary Anthony, can you tell us a little bit about how you became involved in this effort? And then I’m going to ask you what you’ve learned since you’ve been in it?

Mary Anthony [00:16:24] Thank you very much for the question. It’s an interesting one. Right from Nigeria, before we came in, we are told of what you are going to do in the US. And then a little bit of training has been given, like one of my sister has involved and then for three and half years immediately before we all came down to this place. We have four EHJ sisters, Eucharistic Heart  of Jesus sisters now in Denver to work with Mr. Kenney in our home here and for the folks when we arrived here, we are to Louisiana. Like Mr. Kenney has already said, a lot of people came in who are really involved. We are really people that has this problem of sex trafficking and all the rest of them. They came in to teach us with one good week. We have seminars, we have workshops, interaction with them and with this statement and more. So we’re able to do a lot of things within this one week, and we are very happy to have such a training. After that, we had another training when we came in here at Denver where we training for another one whole day. So it really intensified all that we got in and iterates. And since we came in, we’ve been going for one workshop or the other. So it has been very helpful. And then we look forward to really what we need people to give them the really support they need to know that God loves them. And we, as female, we love them too, and the human being created in the image and likeness of God. So we need to work together to show them love, how to pray, how to work, and to know that God is with it

Sandie [00:18:18] I love hearing your passion, Sister Mary Anthony, and I love this model. I believe you currently have 25 sisters working in six different cities, and the concept of bringing everyone here where you have all of the training is a very innovative approach. We often go places. I’ve been on so many planes and I go, I went to Zambia to work with the sisters there and do training. And this idea of bringing them here where you have all of the teachers ready and then sending them out, that’s a great model that is replicatable as well. Thank you so much, sister. It’s so reassuring to know that there’s going to be somebody there that stays there. It’s the same person and it’s not constant transition. And then there’s phase two of the AVODAH program with the health clinic and housing, Keenan or Deb, can you give us just a little glimpse of what that’s going to look like?

Deb [00:19:35] Sure, Sandie. I’ll start and Keenan, you can chime in at the end or finish what I miss. You know, we have, I just want to back up for a second. Everybody that goes into one of these homes will have completed training, and anybody who wishes to go into these homes will be vetted carefully and trained. And this is important. This is very important for the victims to become on their journey to survivors. Things can be triggered and they, well-intentioned people can do more harm than good if they’re not trained properly. So everybody will be trained. And as far as phase two, we really, this is the first phase of getting the sisters here and getting them the safe homes that have been identified up and running. Keenan mentioned the program director and the clinical director. I’m working right now with the Academy of Forensic Nursing, specifically Pat Speck who’s the president, and she is went graciously and generously went to the training and taught about trauma informed care. She’s going to help us with the clinical director role, as well as potentially bringing in nurse practitioners to be assigned to these residents of each of the homes. And then this phase two really talks about, you know, when we have this, these models down very well and doing well, we’ll be able to identify more. As you were saying, is it replicable? Absolutely. I mean, the problem isn’t going to be finding the homes. We, there’s plenty of those available. And then the sisters, they seem to be even more. They hear about it more and we’re going to have another training with Filipinos and more sisters. That seems to be going well. And then when we really figure out the transition, so we’ll be, I know Keenan and I have talked about this, but you know, there will be certain apartment buildings that will be close by the safe home, but they’ll be able to start, you know, learning the trade and putting into practice and having the money to be able to afford to stay on their own. So that may take sooner for some and longer for others. But that’s going to be that phase two. So we’re excited. We’re excited about this phase one and really perfecting it. So we will be able to replicate it and move on and improve many, many more lives.

Sandie [00:22:12] Thank you, Deb. I was fascinated and really encouraged when I saw and heard from you in our conversations. The concept of compassionate and supportive housing. We hear about how important it is for us to have supportive housing, but bringing the sisters into this. And there are so many different communities that are part of the listening audience for the Ending Human Trafficking podcast that can transfer this model to your faith community, where you can bring the same kind of innovative secret sauce for repurposing things we already have for creating new avenues for people who are already part of our community. And this last piece of reintegration, developing that phase two long-term transitional with mentorship and in your literature, it says friendship. And I have to say I began in anti-human trafficking with the concept that I had something that I wanted to pass on to survivors, that mentorship piece. And now my life is richer because I’ve moved into the friendship space. And it is a mutual relationship. These are my friends and that is key to that lasting reintegration. Deb and Keenan, can you give us your website?

Deb [00:23:55] Sure. Mine is globalstrategicoperatives.org. Thank you, Sandie.

Keenan [00:24:02] Yeah. And ours is avodahcollective.org. A-V-O-D-A-H collective.org.

Sandie [00:24:07] Thank you so much, Keenan, for joining us. Thank you, Deb. Thank you, especially Sister Mary Anthony. I also want to leave a link in the show notes to episode 239, where we interviewed Luke de Pulford and the Arise Foundation Tove van Lennep. And in that episode, the rise of prevention and the role of the faith-based community research that shows the impact that what the AVODAH Collective is doing is having a profound impact on communities here in the U.S., where I am, and globally, where many of our listeners are. Thank you so much.

Dave [00:24:58] Thank you all for your time today. We’re inviting you, of course, to take a few minutes to visit the website. All of the links we’ve mentioned today will be up on the website, as always. Also, you may want to when you’re online, download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’s absolutely free. It’ll teach you the five critical things that Sandie’s identified in her work through the Global Center for Women and Justice that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can get access to all of that by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org. It’s also a wonderful place to find more information about the Anti-Human Trafficking Certificate program here at Vanguard University, again at endinghumantrafficking.org, and we will be back in two weeks for our next conversation. Thanks, Sandie. Thanks, everybody.

Co-hosts, Dr. Sandra Morgan and Dr. Dave Stachowiak, discuss the wellbeing of all our children. The emphasize the need to provide access to education and access to social services in order to see that all the children are fine, which will lead to a strong community.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 264, How Are All the Children?

Production Credits [00:00:08] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

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

Sandie [00:00:34] 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. Sandie, in our last episode, we talked to Stephan Lambert about all of the current issues with substance abuse going on with kids and teens right now. It’s a fascinating and difficult conversation, but such an important one. I hope folks will go revisit if they haven’t already heard it. And it’s a great lead-in to today’s conversation, isn’t it? How are all the children?

Sandie [00:01:11] Oh my goodness. Yeah. The timing couldn’t have been better, really. And back at Vanguard, our students are back in person and it’s a very different environment, and anxiety and stress responses are different. But I was inspired by a school superintendent from Long Beach a few months ago who mentioned there is an African greeting that says, How are the children? And I thought, that’s pretty interesting. So I dug into it and spent a few hours on the internet reading and discovered that there is a Maasai warrior greeting. And the key here, Dave, is warrior. The key word. And I think sometimes we think the frontline in human trafficking is raiding brothels. But over and over again, I come back to prevention and that starts in childhood. So these warriors greet each other and Maasai warriors are very tall and very strong, and they look intimidating. And so when they greet each other with how are all the children, the correct response if you’re protecting your village is all the children are fine. So Dave, you’re a Maasai warrior. I’m a Maasai warrior. How are all the children, Dave?

Dave [00:02:53] All the children are fine. Or, are they not are?

Sandie [00:02:58] Ah, and I was telling this story at Priceless and Judge Maria Hernandez and Judge Joanne Motoike, who have worked with our children CSEC survivors for years, both said at the same time, all the children are not fine. And that’s why I believe that we need to reframe prevention as the front line. And if you start thinking about what that looks like, we aren’t going to have the number of victims further on down the road if we do prevention. Look what happened when America decided enough with lung cancer and they got on track for prevention to stop smoking? Did we end smoking? We did not. But did we reduce smoking? I haven’t been to a restaurant where they allow smoking in a really long time, and it wasn’t in California. So you can have impact with prevention. We just have to think about what that looks like. So when I started thinking about this Maasai warrior greeting, it energized me to be just a little stronger in my approach to prevention. I want to see myself as a prevention warrior.

Dave [00:04:33] When you think about that distinction between doing what you were doing before and being a prevention warrior, what’s different about your thinking or actions that you’re now taking?

Sandie [00:04:46] Well, I think I want to begin to frame the front line in terms of the battles that are going on. So for instance, right here in Orange County in the 2019-2020 Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force Report, we identified 101 children who were being commercially sexually exploited. So those numbers are horrific, right? That’s just one little county. It doesn’t encompass the nation or the globe. But here’s the part about that that we often overlook. We kind of tend to think it doesn’t happen in my community, someplace else. But 63% of those children were home grown Orange County children. So Dave, you live in Orange County? How are all the children?

Dave [00:05:54] Certainly not fine. And the other thing that comes up for me thinking about that number of course is that’s the number we know about. It doesn’t reflect really the whatever the actual number is, does it?

Sandie [00:06:07] No, it does not. I think of hidden victims that nobody even knows are there. And if somebody doesn’t see them, doesn’t understand–and not just in commercial sexual exploitation, but also in labor trafficking. Go back and listen to Shyima’s story right here in Orange County as a child maid trafficked to Orange County. One other thing about those hundred kids in the last report, 90% of them had prior abuse reports. They had already been identified by child welfare as being in an unsafe situation. So, as a warrior, I have a very different perspective on my responsibility in my community. I’m a protector, and sometimes we are not as alert to what’s going on in our community and how we can become better at protection. We’re very fortunate here in Orange County that we have a surgeon general and that we now have a program to do the adverse childhood experience test in pediatrician offices. It’s a great way to screen for kids who might be potentially in a harmful situation. And those results, which are based on a couple of decades of research with the Center for Disease Control and Kaiser, you can read about it. I’ll put links in the show notes. But the idea that we can identify through a simple screening tool kids who might be more vulnerable, those 90 percent of that 101 number right here in Orange County. So then I extrapolate that to the whole state, to the nation, and I’m excited about what I can do on the front line in prevention.

Dave [00:08:24] Our son has been ill this past week, and so we were at the pediatrician’s office and I noticed the ACEs posters are in every exam room documented all over the place and I hadn’t, I don’t recall seeing those before, and it did catch my attention of just that we are, at least here locally, like doing a good job at getting that message out amongst medical providers, and you really do see it visually when you show up.

Sandie [00:08:53] That makes me so happy to hear that. That is great. acesaware.org, you can go to that website and much like Stephan Lambert in our last episode talked about, there are ways to help our kids cope. And even if someone has had an adverse childhood experience that can compound into your adulthood, you don’t turn 18 and suddenly all of the challenges you had are over. Many times they become extra baggage for you to carry into adulthood. But ACEs Aware has great resources for responding to those adverse childhood experiences. Mental health resources, coping strategies, mindfulness, all of those kinds of resources. So as a warrior, I’m probably not going to go pick up a bow and arrow. I’m more likely to go and say, Who’s your trusted adult? Do you have access to counseling and mental health resources, social emotional learning in your school, those kinds of things? I want to build the protective fence around the children in my community.

Dave [00:10:18] And if we continue the warrior analogy, there’s a sense here of it may not be a bow and arrow, but it may be armor, right? So it’s building that. I’m not sure what the right word is I’m looking for. Somewhere there’s a Minecraft analogy here, because that’s what I play with the kids all the time. Durability. That’s the word that they use all the time. Like, you know, with all the the resources in Minecraft and you really are building durability if you are educated about these resources and those conversations are happening. It is, it’s not, like you said, Sandie, smoking is a great analogy. Smoking hasn’t disappeared. But if you look at the difference between smoking in our society today and the prevalence and what it was 25, 30 years ago, it is night and day the difference and we have the same opportunity here.

Sandie [00:11:17] Absolutely. So here we are in Orange County, but our listeners are literally around the world. So I want to look at the latest ILAB report, and the ILAB report is produced every other year by mandate here in the U.S. and it represents statistics from the International Labor Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and it analyzes what is happening through the Bureau of International Labor Affairs. That’s what ILAB stands for. And so in their recent estimate, and this is why I am so concerned that the answer is all the children are not fine. We actually took a huge step backwards in 2019-2020. The absolute number of children in child labor increased for the first time in two decades, from 152 million to 160 million. That’s global, and those are big numbers. That is a 9.6% increase. That is eight million more children, eight million more children. And here’s the part that is especially disturbing. 79 million of those children are in hazardous work environments. That means they’re in dangerous places that you wouldn’t let your kids go. And I think too often our perceptions around human trafficking in children has been focused on little girls being sold for commercial sex, and that is happening. But in this report, this is about labor trafficking and more boys than girls are in labor trafficking. The child labor reports are that boys in rural and agricultural environments with entwined with a lack of access to education. And when I looked at the U.N. report, I was actually surprised when I saw that the breakdown of children being trafficked was 15 percent boys and 19 percent girls. That’s just a tiny difference between girls and boys. And because of our perceptions, we’ve been mostly inundated with the stories of sex trafficking. We haven’t really focused on what’s happening to the boys in our community.

Dave [00:14:37] Does the report cite a reason or reasons for the jump of eight million more since 2018?

Sandie [00:14:49] Well, there are some guesses and now then, you know, further research is in motion. But with COVID, many people lost their economic security. And so a parallel to this, if you go to the Sustainable Development Goals on the UN website, you’ll find that our progress in eliminating poverty took a huge step backwards. We lost a great deal of that motivation. So if poverty is an issue in a particular community, then that’s going to place families at risk. And the choice between sending your son to school or sending your son to a field to work or to a mine to work doesn’t feel like a choice anymore. It feels like survival.

Dave [00:15:51] Yeah, but such an unfortunate turn of events. I mean, the pandemic has affected us in so many ways. And yet, you know, we so I think we’ve all intuitively known that even though obviously things have transitioned with vaccines and not over by any means, but there is the sense a bit psychologically of looking at everyday activities in many places around the world of things–I don’t even want to say normal–but things starting to reset into a new way of being. And yet we are going to see the fallout for several years on this for a while, and this is just one yet another indicator of how the pandemic has really affected so many things in a negative way.

Sandie [00:16:41] And we were making progress, I think. I don’t want people to think we had overcome, but we were making progress. And now the research shows even more the glaring gaps in access to education and access to social programs. I love that we just interviewed Stephan because the anxiety and stress and not having the coping mechanisms have resulted in lots and lots of increases in substance use disorders. And so because people turn to an easy, cheap way to control their emotions. And so when we think about how that impacts communities where there are no mental health resources or very limited, then you can see how children might become less, I’m not exactly sure how to say it, but I want to say less valuable to the community. And they just are almost invisible and are basically surviving many times in some of the communities I’ve researched. There are large communities of street children, and how do they survive? So access to education and access to social resources? That’s what we need to do to create that durability and resilience in our communities.

Dave [00:18:26] For those hearing this, perhaps for the first time or perhaps hearing this anew and thinking about these trends as we now see them. Where are you inviting folks to begin to take the first step?

Sandie [00:18:39] Wow, that’s such a good good question, I think. I mean, we’re going to keep talking about about Stephan in this conversation. His bottom line proposition is that a great deal of the easy access to cheap substances is greed and making the counterfeit pills, and all of that is about greed. Well, human trafficking is about greed. And when big corporations purchase agricultural products at below market rates because they’re not paying for labor, that’s all about greed. And there are things we can do from a labor trafficking perspective. We can begin to use the tools we talked before about the Sweat and Toil app. There is a new app called Comply. And it will show you the companies and how they’re checking their supply chains. We’ll put a link in the show notes to get to that and really becoming much more knowledgeable consumers. We just did our annual Live2Free Fair Trade Fashion Show where our Vanguard students put on an event designed to teach us about the harms of fast fashion. So one of the things that I learned when they first started doing this several years ago is that a great deal of the cotton for the clothes, especially here in California with our weather, we wear lots of cotton. 20 percent of the world’s cotton is harvested in Uzbekistan, and it is a country where children often are not in school because they are working on the cotton plantations. So how do we begin to make sure that we’re not investing in cotton that was cheaper because it was harvested and supported by child labor? Those are just some examples, and I think big business has a lot of opportunity to be leaders. And as consumers, we start asking questions. We’re going to get their attention. So, for instance, go back and listen to the interview with Ben Skinner on Transparentum and how do we educate our corporations? And I think recently, Dave, I was really struck by reading in the book of Philippians chapter one about the role of knowledge and insight in living our best lives, being our best person. And knowledge and insight, that’s why you’re probably listening to this podcast right now. You want to understand more. So that would be my first step, getting more knowledge.

Dave [00:22:02] But, you know, I was thinking almost the same thing when. It’s interesting. You said knowledge and insight. I was reflecting also on what Stephan said about greed, and you know, there’s of course, the opportunity for all of us to influence organizations and especially if we are working in a large organization or partnering with other organizations to raise these conversations. And there’s also the opportunity for each one of us with especially the young people in our life, to have conversations that on their face may not seem anything about trafficking or substance abuse, but get to the bigger picture of looking at how does the world work and greed specifically? One example that Sandie is oftentimes when our family goes somewhere, our kids do something, and they get something for quote unquote free, like we’re at an event and like someone’s handing out something for free, or they can download something from a app store that we approve, but it’s quote unquote for free. We’ll often, not every time, but we have a conversation of why do you think this is free? What is it that, what is it that this organization or this entity or this piece of software is trying to do or try to incentivize you to do by making it free? And we try to frame that as in free isn’t always bad. It’s not that you can’t accept something, but just to be mindful of what is going on here. Like, what’s the larger narrative? And our kids, I think, are getting that a little more like when we often ask that, like right away, they’re like, Oh yeah, while they’re trying to get more YouTube views. So, and so, that just that, starting with some of those, I love Stephan’s invitation. Like, just look for the everyday kinds of conversations that are already, things that are already happening in life and utilizing those as an opportunity to start to frame the bigger picture, the human elements that are going on. And that way, you start to develop a resilience, a durability for when the situations get a lot more complicated.

Sandie [00:24:09] When we look at children, whether we’re looking at the big global picture or right here in our own communities, I think that we want to remember that they turn into adults. And so when you look at the numbers of adults in human trafficking, they didn’t get out when they turned 18. And it reminded me, as I was preparing for today, of a conversation I had with Judge Maria Hernandez when she came to my Vanguard class and spoke on the school to prison pipeline. I had never heard of anything like that, and she gave an example of a six-year-old who had a series of tardies and absences that were unexcused. So here’s a six-year-old, and I know Dave, you’re already thinking, Well, it’s not his fault that he’s late. It’s not his fault he’s not there. So you have to look and see about the adults around him, and you find out then that mom is working two jobs and gets home from a night shift and falls asleep and doesn’t get up to take him to school. But he’s the one with the tardies and the after school issues because of not being in class. And of course, not being on time means he’s going to be behind his fellow students and he’s going to probably start accommodating for that acting out. And as he gets older, he carries that with him. So if I’m worried or concerned about how are all the children, I am not just thinking about my own two daughters, but I’m thinking about all the children because our community then is built on how all of the children are doing. And we have to find ways to better serve, to better protect, to prevent the kinds of consequences that might happen. What would it be like if somebody figured out that little Tommy was late to school three out of five days because his mom worked the night shift and somebody arranged to pick that little kid up every day for school? Very small, very small.

Dave [00:26:56] That’s a bid difference.

Sandie [00:26:57] Yeah. So I think we can start looking for that access to education, access to social services. How are we protecting our children? If we’re protecting our children, then we know what’s happening with the adults in the community. The whole community will thrive better when our children are all fine.

Dave [00:27:24] A first step you may wish to take is to look at some of the resources that Sandie has found in these reports. And of course, we’re going to post them in our episode notes, as we always do. If you go over to endinghumantrafficking.org and look up this episode number 264, you will find the notes posted there. And of course, we’re inviting you to take the first step while you’re online. If you haven’t before, perhaps you’re picking up the episode here or the show for the first time, if you are, welcome. I hope you’ll also hop online and start with a copy of Sandie’s guide. It’s absolutely free. It’s Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll teach you the five critical things that Sandie’s identified in her work that you should know before you join the fight against human trafficking. You can get access to it by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org. And if this or a recent episode, have raised any questions for you of something you’d like to hear more from us about, I’d invite you to take a moment to reach out to us so you can do that on the website at endinghumantrafficking.org. Or you can just send a message to [email protected] and that’s the very best way to reach us. And we, of course, will be back with our next conversation in two weeks. Sandie, as always, thank you for your leadership and the research. I’m so looking forward to our next conversation.

Sandie [00:28:47] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:28:48] Have a great day, everyone.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Stephan Lambert, the Prevention Coordinator with OCDE. Together, they discuss the prevalence of substance use amongst youth, prevention strategies, and intervention to teach youth about the harms of substance use and the signs of withdrawals, addiction, and mental health disorders.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 263, Substance Use Prevention in Schools with Stephan Lambert.

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

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

Sandie [00:00:36] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:39] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, we’ve had so many conversations over the years about partnership, and of course, schools have come up in these conversations often. Today, I’m so glad for us to be able to welcome an expert that will help us to look at this issue through the lens of school. And of course, some of the current things that are happening right now that’ll help us all to be better educated and to be able to take the next steps. I’m so pleased to welcome Stephan Lambert to the show today. He is the prevention coordinator at the Orange County Department of Education. His 14 years of experience and substance abuse prevention, positive youth development, family and community engagement and developmental asset building. In his role at OCDE, he supports schools and districts with training and technical assistance around alcohol, tobacco and other drug prevention. Stephan, we’re so glad to have you on the show.

Stephan [00:01:37] Thank you. So glad to be here.

Sandie [00:01:39] Well, I’m excited to have this conversation. Every time I have the opportunity to learn from you I walk away shocked, sometimes a little overwhelmed, but definitely better equipped to deal with what our kids are facing and how I can help other parents know exactly what to do. So I thought of you recently because I’ve read yet another story in our Orange County newspaper of a fentanyl overdose death. Can you describe what’s happening with this very disturbing trend and why it’s happening?

Stephan [00:02:28] Yes. So this has been a great concern for us at OCDE and I think really the entire Orange County public health community right now is that the young people who are experiencing an overdose of fentanyl has absolutely exploded over the last few years. Now, fentanyl was something that had been out in the community for a while, but the rates for young people and particularly those under 18, was fairly low. It was fairly low. Obviously, any overdose death of a young person is extremely tragic. But what happened in the last couple of years is it absolutely skyrocketed and went from about, you know, two to four a year all the way up to 19 in the last year. So it absolutely if you look at the data and you look at the trend over time, it really did take off in the last year. You know, there are all kinds of reasons that could explain that. And part of it could be, you know, all of the extreme stress and anxiety that young people are dealing with right now because of COVID 19. And another side of it is on the supply side. So what’s happening right now is that there are drug trafficking organizations that are churning out thousands and millions of counterfeit pills. So counterfeit pills is really what we’re focusing on as far as raising awareness because young people believe that they are taking a Xanax or Valium or an oxycodone that they bought off of a friend or social media, when in fact what they’re taking is a fake pill. It’s a fake pill that’s laced with fentanyl and very often a lethal dose. So this is the issue that we’re dealing with right now, and it’s causing all kinds of, you know, heartache and tragic situations throughout Orange County.

Sandie [00:04:21] And it sounds like this is our situation right here in Orange County. But if those organizations are producing at such high levels, this is national an emergency for a lot more than just Orange County.

Stephan [00:04:37] Yes, absolutely. I mean, it also applies at the state level throughout California. Many, many people are reporting just an absolutely astronomical increase in fentanyl overdoses, particularly among young adults, is the hardest hit population. But it is extremely troubling to see such a high rate among our teens because typically that was not the case before.

Sandie [00:05:01] So two things. First of all, I want you to explain the counterfeit process a little bit. Why did they look so real?

Stephan [00:05:11] Yeah. So what is being done is folks are acquiring pill presses essentially. So what you have are these machines that you can get some powder, this inert powder filler, basically and then add fentanyl and you put it in the machine and it’ll create a stamped pill that looks legitimate, that has the dosage supposedly on it, the same markings, the same lines, logos that you would see on an authentic Xanax or an authentic oxycodone. And really, it passes inspection. It’s really difficult to tell. And in the show notes, I’ll post a visual showing three different pills, only one of which is genuine, and it’s almost impossible to tell. And because it’s so easy for these things to be made, and many young people just have no awareness of the fact that these that these counterfeits are out there, it leads to very dangerous situations and what the lethal dose of fentanyl for most adults is only two milligrams. And this is an amount of powder that could fit on the end of a number two pencil. It’s extremely small, so you can imagine when these organizations are churning out all of these pills, they’re not particularly concerned with quality control. Right? This is not a pharmacy. And so you end up with very unpredictable amounts of this drug distributed through these pills.

Sandie [00:06:29] So kids are really unknowing consumers of these counterfeits. And I’m pretty sure in school you’re telling them that these are counterfeit. So why did they continue to think it’s safe?

Stephan [00:06:45] So that’s I mean, the issue of counterfeit pills has been around, I would say, for at least the last few years. And you know, I think that we didn’t really have that big of a focus on it because there wasn’t that much prevalence. And again, while there were fentanyl overdoses among young people, they were very low prevalence. But it seems like something has changed on the supply side, and there’s just so much more availability and so many more incidences of this occurring that we’re really ramping up the awareness around it. And I think that the larger issue, too, is we have had a concern with medication misuse for, you know, a couple of decades now looking at the opioid crisis. And, you know, a lot of the messaging around that wasn’t necessarily around counterfeits. It was around the fact that it was purely unsafe to be misusing medication in general. That hasn’t changed. I think that young people still do have the perception that, Oh, you know, this isn’t a street drug. This is something that came from a pharmacy. It’s safe, regulated. There’s a, you know, a strict amount of the substance in there. And you know, that, first of all, was not an accurate risk perception, right? We know that medication misuse has killed more young people and more Americans than all illegal street drugs combined. Year after year, right?

Sandie [00:08:05] No. Wait, wait. You got to say that again. I don’t think I knew that.

Stephan [00:08:11] Yes. Prescription misuse, particularly opioids, but also including including other drugs like Xanax and benzodiazepines, has taken more lives through overdose than illegal street drugs locally, statewide and nationwide, particularly during the peak of this opioid crisis. And that’s why, you know, it’s so important to realize that these pills, even if they weren’t counterfeit considering them safer than street drugs is actually inaccurate. And so we try to correct that perception with young people.

Sandie [00:08:42] OK, so kids think it’s safe because it looks like it came from the pharmacy. But they can’t walk in and get it from a pharmacy. And you mentioned that they purchase from their friends and on social media. And I kind of had this sense that everything going on on social media, there was actually no real connection. It’s out there and your kid is in the house sitting right there in the living room and they’re safe. But I guess I’m wrong again.

Stephan [00:09:17] Well, no. I mean, I think that there are many there are many avenues when it comes to discussing safety on social media. But I mean, you know, there are all kinds of risky behaviors and transactions and things happening over social media, much of which is not monitored. And it’s, you know, it’s so large of a problem that the companies don’t have the capacity to monitoring a lot of this, their privacy issues as well. So what it really comes down to, unfortunately, and I hate to put this burden on parents, is that we have to be aware of what the young people in our lives are doing on their who they’re talking to, you know, the conversations they’re having and how it connects to what they’re doing in real life. Because if we don’t have that awareness, we’re not monitoring that. I mean, it’s not like the old days where you had one phone line in the house and, you know, if somebody was on it. Now there are conversations that can be happening all day all night and setting up some of these these transactions, which again, young people think are safer than they are.

Sandie [00:10:19] So my granddaughter was explaining to me how some of her friends tricked their parents. They’d hand them their phone and say, see, my social media looks are wonderful, and the parents didn’t know that her friend had another account that the parents never saw.

Stephan [00:10:40] Yeah, the concept of a fake Instagram or finsta, as the young people will say, has been around a while where you have kind of a clean, sanitized version of your social media that family and, you know, potential colleges can look at. And then you have sort of the more intimate account where you keep it private and only a small circle of friends can see it. And I think that you know this, it does come down to kind of personal parenting styles and your own comfort level. But sometimes it can be helpful to just spot check, you know, surprise. Like, Hey, let me let me take a look, let me see what you’re doing. And I know everyone has different relationships with their kids, different versions of what that looks like with monitoring. But it’s important to know that we are that last line of defense, that we are responsible for our kids safety. And sometimes, you know, we have to take authority and do things like that, even though, you know, it makes some people uncomfortable. And that’s OK. It’s not for everyone. But if you feel, for instance, that your child or young person in your life is starting to engage in some risky behaviors, you just feel like something’s off. You feel intuitively that something is going on. It can be worth it just to inquire and to be honest about it and say why you’re doing it and that you care about them and you’re looking out for their safety. And you just want to, as they say, trust but verify. Right? So that’s always an option is to to make sure that what you’re seeing reflects their reality.

Sandie [00:12:14] So how old should a child be before I start talking to them about drug use?

Stephan [00:12:21] Wow. Well, definitely in the elementary school age is when these conversations begin, and of course, we want to emphasize that there are age appropriate ways to do it, right. We’re not going to go into all of the scientific details about every kind of substance out there when they’re, you know, in first grade. I’ve got a 14 month old and, you know, it’s a little early. Yeah, you’re talking about some of those technicalities. But very early on, I mean, even when they’re in, like the kindergarten age, we talk about what we put in our bodies, whether it’s food or other things like that. And as they start to observe the world around them and see, you know, the things that we use on a daily basis, it can be helpful to start this conversation around. No, we don’t use that or we only use this based on what a doctor tells us as they grow older. You start to explore those things and and they can see the effect that things have on their health. So it is important to start conversations around health, safety, poison control when children are very young and then sort of progress as they get older. One of the the kind of six strategies, if you will, the six research based strategies on preventing substance use in your kids is to have those ongoing conversations as they grow and develop so that you can check in and see have their attitudes and perceptions changed around substance use. Maybe before they would never even think about touching a cigarette or alcohol or anything like that. But then, because of what they’ve seen, maybe on social media or advertising or just the world around them, those attitudes start to shift. And so by taking advantage of moments where maybe you see something on the news or you listen to a podcast, right, you have these opportunities to bring up that conversation organically and continue it as they grow and develop.

Sandie [00:14:12] So there are six strategies, and we just heard one can you like run through the other five and we’ll put a link in the show notes.

Stephan [00:14:20] Yeah, yeah. I’ll make sure that we put a link to the document in the show notes, and they’re really quite simple and yet can be difficult to implement. I don’t want to say difficult, but what’s simple is not always easy. So number one is cultivating a warm and supportive relationship with young people in your life and, you know, taking an interest in what their interests and passions are. Really connecting with them and having that ongoing conversation and trust, the two way trust, so that they feel more comfortable again to come to you if they start to feel pressures or they start to think about experimenting with things that you can be a sounding board, of course, while maintaining rules, boundaries, expectations, but that they feel they can have that open communication. The second principle is to be a role model. So role modeling the use of alcohol and medicine and stress coping in the home because our kids are watching. And if they see that perhaps, you know, we deal with stress in ways that aren’t as healthy, they’re watching that as well. And if we’re sharing prescriptions, you know, we’re keeping them up in the medicine counter. We’re all guilty of this. We have leftover prescriptions and we kind of just share them among our family members when we’re feeling under the weather or, you know, we hurt our back. They noticed that as well. So it’s so important that we keep modeling the best healthy behaviors around those and then knowing the risk factors would be the third one. So being aware of family history or if they have mental health concerns, trauma, those sorts of things that can increase the risk of substance use. Number four is knowing their friends. I think this comes back to the social media aspect as well of knowing, you know, who our kids are hanging out with, what they’re doing. Are they all on the same page when it comes to substance use? And knowing those friends parents also is so important because you may have a strict no use policy. You’re clear in your home how things are done, but not all parents see things the same way. Number five and this is the last one because we talked about the conversations is monitoring, supervising and setting boundaries. Like when I say, a warm and supportive parenting relationship, I don’t mean to say, you know, just let your kid do whatever they want. That structure and rules are so important and no teenager is going to tell you, please, please, you know, give me rules, give me boundaries. But it’s so interesting when I speak with young people about, you know, if you could ask parents for one thing or say to the parents that I educate. Why is it that you would want? What is something that was so beneficial? And they would say to me, you know, just having those rules like having that structure, caring where I am because when the parents don’t check in and monitor, sometimes the message that the child receives is, I don’t really care what you’re doing or where you are. You know, and it sounds so weird to say that because, you know, I was a teenager once, and I don’t think I would ever say that to my parents that please give me rules because I want to feel like you care. But honestly, that structure and having, you know, having that place that box that they can step in and out of and test and flex those boundaries is important. It’s important to have the box so that you can push the boundaries if you don’t have any boundaries at all. It creates, you know, problems developmentally.

Sandie [00:17:52] Wow. We could spend a little more time there, but I have some other questions specifically to these really high risk things, and I want to know what does it look like if you think, what should you be looking for if you think your kids are starting to get involved with drugs, alcohol, nicotine?

Stephan [00:18:11] Yeah. So some of the signs that maybe it’s time to check in and have kind of a deeper conversation, a lot of them are behavior changes. If you notice that your child is not interested in, you know, a lot of activities that they used to be interested in. They’ve moved on from some of their friends. They dropped their best friend all of a sudden. They seem disinterested, disconnected. You’re seeing changes in their sleeping habits, their eating habits and in their openness. Right? So we talk about cultivating that open communication. If all of a sudden that’s shutting off, right? That can be something that needs to be addressed. And if you’re noting, you know, other physical changes, well, rapid weight loss, rapid weight gain, things like that. But a lot of it is behavioral. And when I say these risk factors or I’m sorry these signs, I don’t want everyone to panic because a lot of these are just part of being a teenager, right? It’s like who who when they were a teenager, didn’t start to, you know, hide things from their parents or, you know, have rapid weight loss, rapid weight gain or change their sleep patterns, right? So I would just want to emphasize you’re watching to see if things are progressing, if things are kind of adding up. And, you know, like you have an instinctual sense if something’s going on with your child and it’s okay to just use that as a jumping off point, as a springboard for a conversation because it may not be substance use, right? They may just be dealing with a lot of stress at school. Or, you know, maybe there’s bullying going on, or maybe they’re just having a tough time with everything going on in the world, right? And so whatever it is, when you notice that something’s off with how your child is behaving or feeling that’s a great opportunity to check in and just have a candid conversation.

Sandie [00:20:01] Wow. Good advice. When I look at a 15, 16 year old, it’s really hard for me to tell how old they really are. And I’m here at Vanguard University and when my freshmen come and maybe they’re 19, seniors maybe 21, 22, there doesn’t feel like there’s a big difference in that age range, but a lot of the substances available are legal once they turn 21, but they start accessing earlier. And so can you talk a little bit about legal marijuana and vaping and those kinds of things?

Stephan [00:20:49] Yeah. So 21 is now the age across the board, whether we’re talking about tobacco, vaping devices, cannabis, marijuana or alcohol. So it’s across the board 21 for access to many of these things. And the higher the age, the better because we know that the younger that people are when they start to use substances, the more likely it is they’ll develop a substance use disorder or addiction because of brain development. And, you know, when marijuana legalization, it’s only been, I would say, about nine years I think since that happened. And you know, there were these thoughts about what impact is that going to have on young people, about the availability around the kind of social norms related to marijuana. And yeah, I think that it has changed the conversations that we have with young people. We have to approach it differently in prevention because now it is something that is sold to adults over 21. And so we have to frame it much like we frame our conversations around alcohol. And a lot of it has to do with introducing any sort of drug, legal or not, counterfeit or not, early on in the brain is extreme, can be extremely damaging and raise the risk of addiction and other disruptions. And so the thing around vaping and marijuana over the last couple of years, you may remember right before COVID happened nationwide, there were a number of deaths and illnesses and hospitalizations due to vaping. And it was called a valley e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury. And it was very hard to explain and people were really scrambling to figure out what was happening. The only thing they could identify was that these sometimes very young people ending up in the hospital all they had in common was they were vaping and some of them were vaping nicotine, some of them were vaping THC. What it turned out is that many of these cases were related to vaping marijuana. And what they were vaping was in many times counterfeit cartridges. So the THC liquid, the marijuana liquid concentrate that they were vaping was tainted with fillers that were extremely harmful to inhale. And the reason that those fillers were in there, of course, was greed. It was people who are trying to make more money by using cheap fillers in the products that they were selling. And that’s just a theme that runs throughout substance use in today’s communities; is that the reason for the counterfeit oxycodone pills, the reason for these counterfeit marijuana cartridges, counterfeit puff bars, you know, all kinds of vaping devices. Counterfeits everywhere. The reason for all of that is greed. And I think that young people, when we talk with them around making decisions around substances and thinking about what they’re being sold, I think they respond well if we point out, like, why do you think that counterfeits exist? Why would people sell things that they know are dangerous that can be harmful and even deadly? Why do you think that they would continue to sell those things to you and people your age? And they really they understand it’s because they want to make more money and they think that their money is more important than your health. And I think that the more that we can emphasize that nobody likes to feel like they’re being taken advantage of and young people can start to make more critical decisions based on their understanding of how these systems are working and why, you know, why you need to stand up for yourself in the face of it.

Sandie [00:24:24] Okay. Greed in my world, working in human trafficking, that’s what it comes down to as well. And that’s a great conversation to be able to have with any young person, even first, second grade, they start understanding those kinds of concepts. Now I’m thinking about my pre-teen and then into adolescence, and my experience has been kids don’t ask for help. How do you help kids know how to ask for help? How to make it easy? Are there some tips for that or numbers they can call?

Stephan [00:25:05] Yes, absolutely. So whether we’re talking about substance use or talking about mental health concerns, help seeking behavior is something that really comes up a lot because there are many different reasons why young people might not want to ask for help. Things like maybe they have tried to talk to a professional or someone and they had a bad experience. You know, that counselor or that therapist didn’t, maybe they didn’t have weren’t culturally proficient. They didn’t understand how to work with that young person or they just, you know, had an approach that didn’t work at all. Or maybe they don’t, the young person doesn’t recognize the symptoms. They don’t know that what they’re experiencing could be a mood disorder or what they’re experiencing could be tolerance, withdrawal and addiction to a substance. So part of that then, is helping young people to understand the signs and to know like, hey, you know, these are the signs that if you see this in yourself or in one of your friends, ask an adult for help. So starting there, helping young people understand what it means to see the signs of addiction, understand those and also to see the signs of a mental health disorder. So the other part, too, is not knowing who to ask or feeling confident enough to ask for help from an adult. And so we try to build these relationships between young people and their school communities, in particular, because a lot of young people, they need trusted adults. And in a school setting, we really think that those trusted adults have the capacity to bring resources and help to students, even if they themselves aren’t, you know, a substance use counselor or something like that. They can find the right door. And so we are really focused on training educators, on recognizing signs and understanding what resources are out there. I think the most important thing when it comes to helping young people ask for help, is again, and I, you know, I sound like a broken record, that warm, caring relationship. Whether it’s a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, teacher, counselor, doesn’t matter? Youth pastor. Having that warm relationship opens that door in a way that absolutely nothing else can. And so it’s so, so important that young people feel they’re supported and this is a safe place for me to go when I have concerns. And I’ll make sure that I list the resources and local help lines in the show notes after this. But we do have the NAMI WarmLine. We have O.C. Links. 855-OC-LINKS here in Orange County, which is our health care agency behavioral health line that can help find services. And there’s an array of different services when it comes to treating substance use for young people. It’s not always, you know, I think people have a view of what, you know, quote on quote rehab looks like. But there are so many services up to and including what’s called, you know, residential care. And so we don’t want young people to be intimidated thinking, if I get help, it has to look like this. But there’s many, many different kinds of ways that they can be supported in transitioning away from substance use.

Sandie [00:28:16] Last question. I have encountered a number of young people in the last few months as we return to in-person meetings and classes and events. And what I’ve seen trending is higher levels of anxiety and the sense that I don’t know how to cope. If you had one minute with a 15-year-old and you could teach them one way of coping, what skill would you teach them?

Stephan [00:28:54] Wow. I mean, I think that the number one and when you look at research and you look at what actually works for people, I mean, there’s so many things that work. But the number one, I think, would be mindfulness and just the idea of slowing down, thinking about your thinking and being able to understand when feelings come and go. I think that core skill can help so many people, and it’s I think that there is not stigma, but there’s a certain sense of like, Oh, this is a very, this is not for me, right? This is a very particular kind of person, just meditation, mindfulness, but it’s not true. I mean, there are so many different ways to engage with mindfulness. I would say that is, any young person could benefit from at least trying, at least trying mindfulness practice, finding something that works for them and that that would be the the number one. Although there are so many other things when it comes to, you know, nature and going outside and exercise and connecting with others. But just that core of being able to sense your feelings, think about your thoughts can help so much.

Sandie [00:30:04] And I started during COVID doing a daily mindfulness practice where I write down specific incidents of positive things that happened that I’m grateful for. And it really has helped me because I think we sometimes as adults, we aren’t as transparent with our kids as we ought to be, and we kind of set the standard a bit high. And that may be a barrier for them to admit that they are having any challenge with coping. And then it becomes easier to try a chemical way of coping, and we want to stop that. Stephen, I can hardly wait for Ensure Justice. OCDE is our partner for Ensure Justice every year, and I already saw the list of workshop speakers from Department of Ed and you’re on the list. So listeners, make sure you’re at Ensure Justice and get a chance to talk to Stephan in person.

Stephan [00:31:10] Yes, I’m really looking forward to it. I mean, like, like you said, it’s been a number of years and I think each year it gets even bigger and better. And I’m looking forward to, what is it, in February, March?

Sandie [00:31:21] March. March 4th and 5th.

Stephan [00:31:23] That’s right. So looking forward to it.

Sandie [00:31:25] We’ll put that in the show notes, too.

Dave [00:31:27] Indeed. Thank you so much to you both for this conversation. I know I’m going to be passing along to several friends and colleagues and just to reinforce that invitation. Ensurejustice.com is where to go if you’d like to find out early information about the conference coming up March 4th and 5th, 2022. You can find out details there. Also, I would encourage you to go to the show notes, especially for this episode, even if you’re not in the habit of doing that for most of our episodes. Stephan’s been really gracious to share some of the resources. The photos he mentioned, absolutely something if you have young people in your life, but almost all of us do in some capacity. What a what a wonderful thing we can do to take that first step of being able to study the issue, and of course, as we always talk about Sandie, then you can be a voice and make a difference if you’re knowledgeable about what’s happening. While you’re online, we’d invite you to take an additional step. Download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll teach you the five critical things that Sandie’s identified in her work here at the Global Center for Women of Justice at Vanguard University that you want to know before you join the fight against trafficking. All of that at endinghumantrafficking.org. And of course, we’ll be back in two weeks for our next conversation. Always a pleasure, Sandie. Thanks so much.

Sandie [00:32:50] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:32:51] Take care, everybody.

In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Dr. Shauntina Sorrells, Chief Program Officer at Orangewood Foundation. Dr. Sorrells discusses what a human-centered design is, the various stages, and how to implement it.

Dr. Shauntina Sorrells joined Orangewood Foundation in 2019. She holds a Master’s and Doctorate in Social Work. Dr. Sorrells is certified in Trauma Informed Training and has been a Trainer of Trauma Informed Practices for various Orange County establishments such as the OC Probation Department and the OC Juvenile and Family Court Judges. She loves to see youth accomplish something they set out to do. “I believe that every youth can reach their greatest potential and I believe that is what Orangewood has always done.” When Dr. Sorrells is not advocating for OC youth, she loves to craft and go camping with her family.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast, this is episode number 262 Human-centered design with Shauntina Sorrells.

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

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

Sandie [00:00:36] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:39] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Today, we’re so glad to introduce to you a local partner, someone who’s just a wonderful voice, an expert in helping us all to move forward on ending human trafficking. I’m so pleased to introduce to you, Dr. Shauntina Sorrells. She is the Chief Program Officer at Orangewood Foundation, a transitional age youth serving organization here in Orange County, California. Shauntina completed her doctorate in social work at USC. She holds a master’s degree in social work from Cal State University of Long Beach and obtained her bachelor’s in psychology from Vanguard University. Shauntina also serves as a professor for her alma mater, Vanguard and Walla Walla University. Courses she enjoys teaching include program development, social psychology, child and adolescent development, community psychology, treating addictions and couples, and domestic violence. Shauntina has worked with families, youth and foster care, individuals in crisis, and organizations seeking innovation and change. Her expertise is in programs that provide community based programing to change the social norms that challenge systemic issues facing underserved populations. Shauntina is certified in trauma informed care training and has been a trainer of trauma informed practices for the Orange County Probation Department, the O.C. Juvenile Court, public defender’s office, and other youth serving agencies. She’s been asked to sit as a former foster youth voice for Orange County Department of Education and Social Services. Shauntina, what a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome.

Shauntina [00:02:17] It’s an honor to be here today with you both.

Sandie [00:02:20] Well, and Shuanitna and I just had lunch together with 250 other people last month, and she was representing Orangewood, our Diamond awardee, at Priceless because of their amazing programing that covers the spectrum of ending human trafficking from prevention to aftercare. And so I am so delighted to have you on Ending Human Trafficking today.

Shauntina [00:02:50] I cannot believe that I’m here, but I am so excited to be here talking about human-centered design with you today, Sandie.

Sandie [00:02:57] I’m really excited about this because it’s such a massive topic. And when I first heard the term human-centered design, I just went down all kinds of rabbit holes. And when I talk to you and we really reviewed how the programing is designed in your work, it seemed like a really good model to help people get a better handle on this. So it’s a massive topic. But everybody, we have an expert here to walk us through the process. So let’s start with defining human-centered design.

Shauntina [00:03:39] Sure. I think, you know, human-centered design is something that once I start talking about it, you’ll go, ah, it totally makes sense. But it can definitely be one of those phrases that can kind of send you going, wait, what am I doing and how am I doing this? So human-centered design really is, in my opinion, a thought process. It’s a way of thinking about a problem and then a solution. In the formal world of human-centered design, we kind of think of it in three phases: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. In each of those phases have a real core driving force behind them and what you’re doing in those phases and how you’re achieving the things that you need to achieve there to move to the next phase so that you can really build and create programs that at the heart of them are about those you serve. And they really do take into account the voices of those who are impacted by the problem as not only the problem but also the solution, and that they have the knowledge and power of how they need to change their circumstances. And we come alongside them to help them figure that out, amplify their voice, and ensure that all solutions are geared towards the areas that they really define as ways to make the problems better.

Sandie [00:05:01] So I think you flipped the script for a lot of us who have been in the professional helping services for decades–victim service providers, case managers, social workers, health care providers. We bring our solutions, our services to the client, and we sometimes see ourselves as fixers. And you bring us your brokenness and here we are. What’s wrong with that?

Shauntina [00:05:32] Oh, wow, Sandie. You hit the nail on the head. That was amazing. Because that is what I often say; is we as social workers, psychologists, helpers, human services professionals, all of these wonderful people, all the best intentions and often come with our own stuff, which I’m sure we’ll get into at some point. But we bring ourselves to the table, and that’s sometimes part of the problem. But we also bring the theories in. All of these educational things that we have learned over the years is this is what you do. This is how you fix things. And so we bring that to the table wanting with all the best intentions to help, to make it better, to stop the pain, to stop the hurting, to really try and help people where they are at and ensure that they get better. The problem with that is, is we all have our own experiences that we’re bringing to the table. We’re also taking, you know, different theoretical approaches that may not actually be conducive for the specific population you’re working with. We may be bringing things in that are actually how the problem is seen by those impacted. And as our society changes and our systems change, we have to understand that the people who are impacted by the problem are the most knowledgeable about how to fix it. And we just have to stop and listen, and we actually have to give them the credibility of lived expertise that what they’re experiencing, what they know is actually the best information that we can have in creating quality, effective programs.

Sandie [00:07:07] OK, so let’s back up and go through those three steps that you mentioned. Let’s start with inspiration.

Shauntina [00:07:16] Absolutely. This is by and large my favorite part of the process because it really does talk about understanding the people. So the in the inspiration phase, it really is about observing, speaking, listening, understanding the hopes, desires, the dreams about those impacted by the problem. This is when you are trying to basically be one with the people in understanding who they are. So you go in with completely no judgment. You take all your reservations away, you take all your preconceived notions, which for us, human beings, that can sometimes be difficult. But you do your very best and you go in and you just ask the questions, you ask the hard questions and then you don’t talk and you listen. You don’t just listen. You also observe. You spend time. Any time I start a new job, I do a 60 day listening tour. And so in that 60 day listening tour, I just spend time with the staff and with those we serve. I am just hanging out if they’re hanging out. I’m going to dinner with the youth who are in our housing programs. I’m spending time in meetings and so you are just as much as you can embedding yourself into the environment as it is, because one, you will see things, you will hear things, you will feel things that you couldn’t necessarily do just by reading a research paper, right? But if you can go and sit with some of our survivors or some of our youth who are at risk and you can just listen to them, talk about what they’re experiencing on a day to day basis. Listen to the words they use. Listen to how they view what’s happening to them and what’s not supportive to them. That inspiration phase is all about really getting inspiration from the people you’re serving to best understand where to go next.

Sandie [00:09:06] So my question now is how do I integrate that, or do I not integrate it with our basic strategies of community needs assessments and environmental scans? And where does that fit?

Shauntina [00:09:26] You’re just perfectly aligned with me. So it really is. I mean, that’s what a community needs assessment is when you really look at the baseline of a community needs assessment. It’s one to understand the literature and research. But the second huge part of a community needs assessment is to understand the community. I think we often go in with our notions of what the solution is when we’re trying to address the community, and this inspiration phase actually says, don’t go in with the solution, you just go in with the problem. Hey, this is a problem. How do you see it? Hey, this is what we understand of the problem. Is that even correct? So you’re just really getting those questions answered, just like in a community needs assessment. That’s kind of what this phase is. We’re just asking you to go a little bit deeper. We’re asking you to broaden your perspective just a little bit more that you’re not going in as a researcher already with the answer; you’re going in is an open book.

Sandie [00:10:19] So tell me how you make that into levels of primary, secondary and tertiary?

Shauntina [00:10:27] Oh my gosh, I love it. Really, what you want to do is you want to make sure you don’t just talk to one aspect of those impacted by the problem. So the primary folks are those who are actually in the pain, right? They’re actually hurting from whatever’s going on. They’re experiencing the problem on a regular basis. And those are your primary targets. You want to understand as much as you can from their perspective, but not forgetting that there are people who are impacted by how the problem hurts that first population or your secondary tier. And so you want to make sure. So if you’re working with our youth, for example, many of our youth are parenting youth and so their children are impacted secondarily. If we help the youth, their children get the help. If we don’t help the youth, their children don’t get the help. So you want to make sure you keep into account any secondary tier, any party that kind of surrounds that first tier so that you understand how would you impact them as well? So if you know that most of your user parenting, then you need to ensure that you have a parenting component and a child development component and some other pieces as well. Because if that you feel successful with their child, that’s only going to expound upon their potential and possibility in future health and healing and growth. So you want to include that. And in tertiary, that’s the community generally. So a community is impacted by human trafficking. A community is impacted by survivor growth. A community is impacted by traffickers. So we have to keep that in mind is what does the community need? How has the community impacted? What’s happening in that community and how does the community see the solution? Part of it may be changing the narrative, helping the community really understand what trafficking is and what might be going on. But then it also may be the community needs healing as well, especially our BIPOC, black indigenous people of color communities who are overly impacted in trafficking. Is that an area that we really need to do some healing with the community as well? So it’s not just an individual thing, but at all levels.

Sandie [00:12:32] Wow. So now we’ve done this and I’m really inspired. So, how do I move to the next phase?

Shauntina [00:12:40] Absolutely. So the ideation phase is what I call like the mad scientist phase, but this really is where no idea is a bad idea. And so you are just thinking about all of the information you’ve collected from those different levels of people impacted by the problem. And you’re coming back to the table and saying, OK, here’s what this group said. Here’s what this group said. Here’s what this group said and trying to find the trends and the themes and looking at what could a potential solution be. And this is where you see those graphics of people with post-it notes all over an entire room. That’s what you kind of want to do with ideation. You want to just put every idea out there, from the extreme to the norm to the mainstream. You just, you don’t want to filter that at this point. You want to put as much ideas out there because usually when we’re looking at problems, we use the same old interventions. And that’s part of the problem, right? So we really want to think outside that box. We really want to put as much out there. And then you’re going to bring others in to look at that and you’re going to slowly filter through the ideas that maybe aren’t feasible, maybe would take too long and the problem is imminent, maybe doesn’t have the funding or backing. Maybe you need some political progress there. Maybe you need this. And so you slowly start to filter through to where you get down to just a few ideas from your magnitude of ideas. And that’s when you go back to the community. You say, OK, I took everything I heard from you, saw from you, felt from you, and I’ve come up with these few things. What do you think? And you help them be part of the decision making in the solutions as well. You help them start to shape what those few ideas would be like to narrow it down to the one idea. And so ideation is really about going as wide and broad as you can and then using a process to come back down to picking an idea that you could actually feasibly launch and see if it works.

Sandie [00:14:41] So you’ve got all these possibilities and now you choose one path for implementation.

Shauntina [00:14:47] There you know go.

Sandie [00:14:50] Implementation, it seems like pulling together everybody’s commitment is another big job for you. You’re the program director. So how do you get everyone to commit to that idea?

Shauntina [00:15:09] That’s a excellent question. You know, implementation, I think, is honestly where most of us start. And I think that’s why implementation can sound scary. And it can sound like something that how do you get that all together? What is lovely about this process is if you really do start from the inspiration and ideation, the people are coming along with you. So you now have the people who are experiencing the problem in the and the secondary and tertiary in line with you. They’re already on your team. So you’ve got those internal contacts, as we like to call it. And now you start to look at those external contacts or factors. So who are the funding bodies? Funders really need to be open to innovation in order to take an idea like this and put it into place. Because many of us, and myself included, we love the evidence-based practice world, and that’s amazing. But they got to evidence-based practice because they did these steps. So we’ve got to fund them at that innovation place and getting out there. We’ve got to get the powers in play, whoever that may be, right? So is it a local human trafficking task force? Is it policy makers, board of supervisors? Who do you need on your team so that you can sustain the work that you’re doing or make a true impact in the community that you’re working in? And then you’ve got to get, you know, your other external pieces that people often don’t think about. Your universities, your churches, your other community organizations that have a stake in this problem that are part of the community; you’ve got to bring them along. But when you already have done that inspiration phase and the ideation phase and brought folks along with you, by the time you’re at implementation, you shouldn’t really be trying to get everyone on the board, you’ve already gotten them there by doing those first two phases.

Sandie [00:17:06] So when you were talking about primary, secondary, tertiary, I think when I first started looking at human centered design, I had a tendency to isolate the person in this story, but you’ve given me more circles of context. So now I learned a new phrase from you in our last conversation because I was ready to go ‘we have a plan, we’re implementing it, we got approval from the whole community.’ And now you said, we have to stop. We have a learning stop, and we just got started a few months ago. Tell me about that learning stop principle and what it looks like.

Shauntina [00:17:53] Absolutely. So I think this is the hardest thing for us fixers and go getters and wanting to make the world a better place. And it really is a pause. So a learning stop is really just stopping and checking your learning. I mean, it sounds really simple, but at every single step it’s taking a moment to pause. Go back to those communities, go back to the primary, secondary and tertiary folks, go back to the people who understand the problem, are impacted by the problem, or engaged in the problem, and say this is what I’ve learned. This is where I’m at now. This is what I’m seeing at this point. Do you agree? Am I off? Have I gone off into the wilderness and gotten lost? Or am I still on track? You often will maybe get some blank stares, or you maybe you will get some quizzical looks. And I think that’s also normal because if we’re thinking outside of the box, sometimes it’s something people have never thought about. So you want to make sure that you’re not getting too far off of the rails and you’re staying within the confines of the problem, so that learning stop just continually helps you to stop, take a pause, and check in with those who you’re designing for that human-centered design. You’re checking in with those people that who are going to hopefully utilize the solution. So you want to make sure each step of the way that you’re taking those pauses and just understanding how they perceive the work that you’re doing, what you’re learning and what you’re putting into practice.

Sandie [00:19:23] OK, so I need a little structure for what that looks like. Is this a calendar reminder in six months that, oh, I should make a few phone calls today? Is it a formal process? Because I can, I know myself so well. I’m going to be really involved in this implementation, and stopping for me is like an interruption. How do I actually make my program make me do that?

Shauntina [00:20:00] That’s an interesting point. So for me, I have a very structured community needs assessment that I have utilized that is embedded in human-centered design. And so it has natural stops. And so I would be happy to share that with you, of course, but there’s very natural stops embedded in the process. However, that’s a great point. If you know for you that it may feel like an interruption one, I would challenge you to really think of it as part of the process. Like it is the step, right? It is what you’re supposed to be doing. So that might help with thinking that it’s an interruption. But secondarily, it may really be something that you do remind yourself to do. It may be that whenever you’re designing this, you always bring a community member through it with you. And in each phase of decision, if you know you need to make a decision about, OK, should we apply for this funding or not, maybe that’s when you bring in a community member. Maybe that’s when you bring in back the folks who are impacted by the problem at each decision making point. That might be another way to kind of think about it, because before you move to that next phase, you should have their buy in.

Sandie [00:21:04] OK. So basically, now Dr. Shauntina Sorrells has committed to be my mentor in human-centered design on public podcasts radio, right?

Shauntina [00:21:16] I knew there was strings attached to this.

Sandie [00:21:18] Yeah, there you go, Oh my gosh, I’m so glad we’re local. OK, so let’s let’s go down then to back to the community place and the funding. Where do you advise people to have that conversation about innovation? How do you do that? Because that’s a big problem. I have been a grant evaluator and I see and I know from the people that are doing good work, they want to do something different, but they got a grant and they have deliverables and this is the way it has to go.

Shauntina [00:21:56] I mean, this is a challenge in our realm, for sure. I think in the nonprofit realm, I think in the human services realm, this is a problem. We have to adapt to where the funders are. So I actually believe we need to go upstream. So I think if we can go upstream and actually work with the funders prior to them releasing their funding requirements. We need to be involved in strategic planning. One of our local government agencies just invited people to speak to strategic measures for them, and I talked about the contracting process and I said, how can we do things better and differently if we’re not allowed to be innovative? So I think one, we have to be willing to speak up and to stand out to do that.

Sandie [00:22:39] I love that speak up and stand out.

Shauntina [00:22:42] Absolutely. I think we also have to, so our granters and our funders, we really need to educate them. So we have to take a step back and help them understand the problem. One of the things I’m really focused on is ethical storytelling. We’ve always had this narrative person has a problem, we came in and fixed it, now they’re better. But that really leaves the person as the victim in their story and us as the hero. And so we’re starting to change that narrative in our own nonprofit at Orangewood and trying to do ethical storytelling. This person had a problem. This person asked for help. This person received the help, used the help, and is now better. It takes us out of the hero role, but that’s also what we want to do with our funders. We want to help educate them that them coming alongside of us allows us to do something different. And yes, we may fail forward. We may learn from this. We may not be successful, but most of our funders, especially our funders who are in other business practices, actually understand this model even better than us. This is what you did when you developed an iPhone or anything other technology or new gadget or new process out in the world. We’re just now tapping into this and using this in our sphere of the world.

Sandie [00:23:57] Wow, that is so helpful. OK. So as we have to close this pretty soon, I want to go back to your early experiences. You’ve been in this for a couple of decades. What perceptions have changed for you?

Shauntina [00:24:20] It’s such an important question. For me, I spent 13 years in the foster care system, and so I had my own personal experience that I brought with me. Leaving foster care with nothing but a laundry basket and getting on a greyhound bus and arriving at Vanguard University. I had plenty of ideas of how the system was broken and what could be done differently. However, I really quickly learned, and especially throughout my professional career, my educational career, that my perspective was only one voice, not the voice. And so I had to take a really giant step back and really understand that I needed to better understand other people who had similar experiences, different experiences, better experiences, worse experiences all across the board so that I could be a better advocate and voice. I couldn’t walk in there with only my voice, because I am only one voice and not the voice. And so that really is something that has shaped my work, shaped what I’ve done, shaped how I view the world, and that my understanding is one sided. It is something and it is powerful and it is impactful and now I’ve done so much research and all of these other things to compound it, so that over time it just really changed how I think about how we need to create change. And I think that’s what draws me to human-centered design so much, is that I can hear so many stories from so many people to better understand something to create a better solution.

Sandie [00:25:57] So wrapping this up, what is your advice to someone who is in especially one of these helping professions where we’ve been for decades programed to be the solution for our clients, which I have to tell you is a lot of stress. It’s also a lot of emotional trauma that’s secondary, vicarious you know all of these things. So human-centered design seems to offer a new direction, maybe is the right word. How would you advise people like me to make this shift at this point in our careers?

Shauntina [00:26:46] I really do believe it offers us another pathway, and I do feel that it can be a pathway with less of those things you just mentioned. It’s the stress and the vicarious trauma and the feelings of failure, if I’m just going to put it bluntly. And I think it can come so heavy for many of us in this field. So my biggest advice would be if you know your program is not working, whether you have data, whether you don’t, wherever you’re at, you know, in your gut, if your program isn’t working, if you’re not seeing things change, if you’re not seeing things go better. I encourage you to just take a moment, schedule a day, even if you have to schedule it two months out, schedule a day to not have any to dos that day and schedule a day where you can take a step back and really think, when was the last time I talked to those impacted by the problem? When was the last time they were part of a decision about the solution? When was the last time I really was able to sit and observe what we do and understand and see if it’s working or not? And if you can’t answer those questions with within the last few months, I really encourage you to go and download. There’s a field kit for human-centered design on IDEO’s website, and it’s completely free and it has fantastic information in there and it has wonderful things, but it’s all that you will need to start exploring human centered design.

Sandie [00:28:17] Wow. Dr. Shauntina Sorrells, what a pleasure to have you as part of my community and part of our Ending Human Trafficking community. We’ll have another conversation in the future.

Shauntina [00:28:30] Thank you so much, Sandie. It was a pleasure talking to you today, as always, and I have enjoyed listening to you since 2007 and I will continue to do so

Dave [00:28:40] Thank you so much both. What a pleasure to be a part of this conversation. Shauntina, thank you so much for your work here in Orange County and of course, influencing the work across the nation and across the globe as as we are always searching to do, Sandie, to really seek out partnerships and experts that are going to help us all to end human trafficking. We’re inviting you to take the first step. If you haven’t already, hop online and download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll teach you the five critical things that Sandie’s identified in her work here at the Global Center for Women and Justice at Vanguard University that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can get access to that by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org. And if today’s conversation has raised a question for you, something you’d like to know more, you can always reach out to us directly at [email protected]. That’s the very best way to get in touch. And we will be back in two weeks with our next conversation. Thanks, Sandie. Always a pleasure.

Sandie [00:29:42] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:29:43] Take care, everyone.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Sarah Byrne, founding member of the National Survivor Law Collective. Dr. Morgan and Sarah discuss the need for trauma-informed legal services for survivors of human trafficking and their complex legal needs.

Sarah has years of experience representing survivors of sex and labor trafficking and is nationally recognized for her work in combatting human trafficking. Sarah is a frequent conference speaker and advocate for legislative change in support of trafficking victims. She is a founding member of the National Survivor Law Collective, a national network of trauma-informed lawyers providing legal aid to survivors. Representing MVA as a participating member, Sarah works with the United Nation’s Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (“FAST”) Initiative to increase survivor access to financial services and guide banks on the Survivor Inclusion Initiative.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 261, Legal Advocacy with Sarah Byrne.

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 the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. If you’ve been listening for any length of time, you know one of the things that we love to do on the show is to be able to bring in the voice of partners and experts who can help us to understand more of the complexity around trafficking and also, most importantly, help us to take the first steps to end it. I’m so glad to welcome today Sarah Byrne to the show. She is an attorney in North Carolina who has been representing trafficking survivors for years. She understands trauma and carefully provides legal services to help her clients. Sarah is now leading the National Survivor Law Collective, where she helps lawyers at law firms from all over the country provide pro-bono services to survivors. Sarah has had years of experience representing survivors of sex and labor trafficking and is nationally recognized for her work in combatting human trafficking. Sarah is a frequent conference speaker and advocate for legislative change in support of trafficking victims. She’s a founding member of the National Survivor Law Collective, a national network of trauma informed lawyers providing legal aid to survivors representing MVA as a participating member. Sarah works with the United Nations Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking Fast Initiative to increase survivor access to financial services and guide banks on the Survivor Inclusion Initiative. Sarah, so glad to welcome you to the show.

Sarah [00:02:05] Thank you for having me.

Sandie [00:02:07] I was very excited when Ambassador John Cotton Richmond reached out to me and said, I want to introduce you to someone, and I always know that’s going to be an exciting conversation. And within a few days, Sarah and I had connected, and I’m sure we’re not going to be able to cover our entire conversation in one podcast. So welcome, Sarah.

Sarah [00:02:32] Thank you.

Sandie [00:02:33] We often hear folks with lofty, aspirational goals for restorative justice. I can still remember where I was when I heard that term. And I became really committed to finding restorative justice for survivors. But along the way, the path to restorative justice seemed to be filled with lots of challenges, lots of barriers. It was windy and it’s not easy. But you said something that stopped me in my tracks when we first talked. You said, I couldn’t find it, so I built it. Tell us about that experience.

Sarah [00:03:24] Oh, well, thank you for that kind of question, Dr. Morgan. So this was around 2012, 2013, and sort of alongside with a lot of the world, I was becoming more informed about human trafficking and its prevalence in my community in particular. And my law firm has a long history of providing pro-bono legal representation to various populations, and we had, and still have, a very strong domestic violence support program. And when I came to learn about human trafficking, I thought, well, I hope there is wraparound services, including legal services for survivors of this crime, just as there is for survivors of domestic violence, at least where I am in the world. And so I said, well, you know, myself and a number of my colleagues at the firm wanted to begin volunteering with such a program and we looked locally. We looked regionally. We even looked nationally and couldn’t find something that looks like what we have since built. And what that looks like is a mission to provide comprehensive legal services to survivors of trafficking. As all of your listeners, I’m sure, would understand, victims of human trafficking have vast and varied legal needs. It’s not the type of pro-bono or other client that walks through a lawyer’s door and says, I need this one particular task done. The experience of being trafficked, and also other life experiences that could be connected to being vulnerable to trafficking, can lead to a lot of legal needs. And we’ll say primarily, one would be engaging in criminal activity. But again, so many other legal needs need to be met. So the program was structured to provide those comprehensive legal services.

Sandie [00:05:22] So let’s back up just a little bit because you talked about that those legal needs are not as simple and direct as maybe one client or other. And so part of what I noticed in the way this is organized is the whole idea that the attorneys are trauma informed. So does that speak to the complexity of the issues that a survivor might bring into an attorney’s office?

Sarah [00:05:53] Absolutely. That is vital to the provision of legal aid to survivors, and that is the primary tenant of the National Survivor Law Collective that you mentioned. That’s a network of trauma informed lawyers who are competent to provide the type of representation that survivors need across the country. Because as those of us in this space know that poor service provision or just non-trauma informed support can be retraumatizing for a survivor and just not deliver good quality, effective legal aid to survivors. So that is of primary priority.

Sandie [00:06:31] Give me an example of that when it goes wrong, because you’ve got someone who knows the law and you have someone who needs the law, what is, if they’re not trauma informed, how does it go awry?

Sarah [00:06:46] Yes, great question. So as your listeners would probably know and have experienced with so many survivors of trafficking and sex trafficking in particular have enormous distrust for the legal system, and that often comes from experiences they had with the criminal justice system being perceived as a perpetrator in activity related to it or just interfacing with law enforcement or prosecutors, and perhaps feeling as though they had to take a plea for conduct that they were coerced to engage in and just other experiences that have led to mistrust with the legal system. So oftentimes in their minds, lawyers are not effective service providers and not individuals that may have understood the complex psychological experience of being trafficked. So there is that base level natural distrust, and we as lawyers, even pro-bono lawyers and law firms or legal aid or nonprofit legal services providers, can be perceived to be in that institution that has never understood what’s happened to them or their needs. So we start with that base level of distrust. And then where it can go wrong, as you ask, is if we as lawyers, for example, in an intake meeting, treat our human trafficking survivor clients as we would any other perhaps with our commercial clients or other clients. And an example of that is, many times as lawyers we asked our clients to come in and they sit down and we say, Tell us what happened that led to you wanting to speak with me? Tell me chronologically what happened from A to Z. And those that have been trained on trauma brain and the implications and results of complex trauma well know that that can be very challenging for a survivor who has experienced trauma, to chronologically describe events in a way that’s consistent with past descriptions or other, you know, recitation of the facts. So that’s problematic for that very reason that that can be challenging and almost impossible for survivors to recount facts that way. But also a lot of what we do for survivors of trafficking. These comprehensive legal services, don’t require us to ask them to describe their exploitation experience to us again because they’ve described it to law enforcement, case managers, health care professionals, mental health professionals to ask them to have to go through that again can be a traumatizing experience. So that’s just one example of how a well-intentioned lawyer can have an adverse impact on a survivor client who has that, as I mentioned, that, you know, already preexisting distrust or discomfort with working with a lawyer to then be asked to sit down and describe exactly what happened to them. You know, whether they can’t do it or that’s just not an effective way to begin that relationship.

Sandie [00:09:46] I was talking to a survivor who was thrilled to have a pro-bono attorney speak with her, and yet, she was petrified, almost nervous, like she was going to court or something because she said, if I don’t get it right, they’re not going to help me. And she said, and sometimes I can’t remember exactly what I said. And so it’s like this idea that this is a big test and they already have the answers and I don’t get them right then I don’t have any help.

Sarah [00:10:27] That’s disheartening to hear and, you know, empowers us even more to ensure that all lawyers that do this work are trauma informed, because that’s certainly not a best practice in service provision if our clients think they have one shot for us to support them. These lawyer client relationships in our experience here, certainly at Moore and Van Allen, are very long relationships that navigate a number of legal challenges. And so to the sense of having one shot to seek remedy through one individual is certainly not, you know, the program that those of us that do this work are setting out to offer.

Sandie [00:11:06] So tell us about how you create a trauma informed environment for a pro-bono attorney. And in first, I think for some of my listeners, they need to understand pro-bono attorneys as a collective in that they may not actually work in your law firm.

Sarah [00:11:26] So as I mentioned before, the primary piece of this is being trauma informed, receiving that education about what trauma is, the impact on the brain and behaviors, and how that may interface with criminal behavior. And then also to understand best practices, which, as you mentioned, lawyers that support survivors can, you know, be part of many different types of institutions. So there are some sort of common best practices that lawyers can engage in. And just kind of a simple, understandable example is we say, let the clients lead. And from the very beginning. You know, oftentimes when we think of other, perhaps commercial clients, we think of ourselves as advisors and we, you know, suggest to our clients a path to achieve their goals or remedy. It’s really inverted in this context. The client’s goals lead and only, if and when, we determine that they would like us to pursue a path to legal remedy that we don’t feel as though we can ethically facilitate. You know, then we might have a conflict of interest. But other than that, we walk them through the steps that we understand through our experience and training might lead to the goals that they want to achieve. And when I say that happens at the very beginning is by giving choice to the survivor, perhaps where you’re going to have the forum, the platform for meeting for the first time, you know, pre-pandemic, all of our clients would they would either come into the law firm and we would have an in-person meeting or we would meet at a safe, comfortable place for them, including the individuals that they felt comfortable with. Since the pandemic, we’ve become much more creative and facile in other forms of meeting and connecting. So, of course, you know, we have zooms and we have the telephone, but the point is that they ought to have the choice in the context platform setting and participants, certainly in that first meeting.

Sandie [00:13:27] So there are three buckets that you introduced me to, and it seems like the choices that they have are in those three buckets. Let’s start with the first bucket and explain to us about vacatur and expungement.

Sarah [00:13:48] Yes. So as mentioned before, we find, and I now working so closely with the National Survivor Law Collective lawyers, I’ve come to understand that this is the experience of a lot of human trafficking survivor lawyers as well. The primary need that survivors come to our program is with regard to expunction or vacatur of criminal records, and I’m using both of those words with a disclaimer that in each state, they can have different meanings. But for purposes of this conversation will describe it as the ability to clean up or get rid of criminal record that they may have incurred as part of their experience of being trafficked. So we have found many of our clients have criminal records that can include breaking and entering, or possession of a controlled substance, or possession of an unlicensed firearm. But it’s a lot of criminal activity, that’s not to be honest, what we thought when we set out to do this work we thought we would face. We thought that we would have survivors that would have mostly prostitution charges or convictions. And that really hasn’t been the experience of our clients on a number of them have had those. They’re mostly historical, but they have these what I call ancillary criminal records that relate to the trafficking or connected to the, you know, the predicate crime of commercial sex. So they would like to understand if they are eligible to have that charge or conviction erased from their record because we all know that having a criminal record can be really debilitating when you’re trying to pursue education, employment, housing and just other opportunities in life. So in our mind, that’s, you know, it’s a number one need from the survivors that we serve, but it’s also a high priority for the lawyers in our program because it’s so high impact when we are successful in cleaning up those records.

Sandie [00:15:51] I am always overwhelmed when I think of the barriers that survivors face if they have any kind of criminal record. And especially if it rises to the level of a felony. In the state of California where we’re recording from, if you have a felony on your record, you can’t get a license to walk dogs.

Sarah [00:16:18] Yeah, it’s creates obstacles in so many different contexts.

Sandie [00:16:24] So the second bucket about victim witnesses, can you explain what that might entail?

Sarah [00:16:32] Yes. So this happens to be my area of most focus for the matters that I work on. So victim witnesses, human trafficking survivors interface with law enforcement and prosecutors in a couple of different contexts. But I’ll just generalize and say we often have a survivor that says to us, I have not reported what happened to me because of a perhaps a distrust of law enforcement or just, you know, the discomfort in reporting a crime, particularly one of this complexity where survivors are often perceived as perpetrators. But I would like to report it because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard that. So they say, I’d like an advocate in that process because I’m nervous about it and we provide that service because survivor’s rights can be at stake in that process for, you know, the very reason primarily that I mentioned in that they could be perceived as a perpetrator of a crime, either in collaboration with a trafficker or just due to the criminal activity that was part of the overall trafficking scheme or otherwise. So they say, I’d like an advocate, a lawyer in that process. So we find that to be really impactful in that it really comforts a survivor in reporting and continuing to participate in an investigation of a trafficker. Another way that it surfaces is a survivor says, law enforcement is calling me to ask me about what happened to me. But I’m really nervous about it again for the reasons that we’ve already mentioned. You know, I’d like an advocate, a lawyer in that process. And the important part of that representation is to ensure that the survivor understands that it is his or her choice, whether or not to participate, the breadth of that participation with law enforcement. And many times we found, I mean, this is anecdotal, but once they are armed with a lawyer in that process, they do want to participate and help law enforcement in the investigation. Now that representation does and should continue for the duration of the criminal process, of course, as we know, so many investigations don’t result in a prosecution, or for the ones that do, that would include a lawyer representing that survivor if she or he is being alerted to a plea agreement and their right to communicate with a prosecutor about that plea agreement. If it goes to trial, they may serve as a victim witness and provide testimony. They certainly would like representation in that process, which includes preparing for trial and then participating again in the actual trial by providing testimony, all the way through to sentencing where they have an opportunity to provide a victim impact statement, either orally or in writing or both where their voice can be heard, and they can impact the court’s decision on a sentence and vital vital, so you talked about restorative justice for survivors. A huge part of that is restitution. And restitution is when the court orders a defendant to pay the survivor for the work that they did and any other losses related to that experience. And a pro-bono lawyer can be really effective and ensuring that the prosecution does make a motion for restitution or whatever other procedural mechanism they ask for that, and to help provide information from the victim about what losses there were, whether that’s lost wages or health care, medical bills or mental health needs, both historical and in the future. That can be really helpful when a pro-bono attorney helps the survivor communicate with the prosecution in order to ensure that a restitution award is as significant as it should be. Of course, compensatory damages in this way will never make a survivor whole for their experience, but it can be so supportive to a survivor who’s looking to achieve financial independence following exploitation and can minimize the chance of re-exploitation in the future.

Sandie [00:21:07] OK, so I have like 17 questions now following up on that. Going back to the idea that sometimes there is this sense that I want to talk to somebody, but mostly because I don’t want this to happen to somebody else. And when I’m interfacing with law enforcement and victim services, there is this principle in our federal enhanced collaborative model of a victim centered approach. And so I have like two different teams. If you can imagine this with me and this team is lined up to protect the survivor and that’s my victim service providers. And then I have my law enforcement team and they want to go find more survivors, and the key to that, is the person behind the victim service line. And so they have competing goals. One is focused on making sure her or his rights are protected and they’re not retriggered and all of those things. And then you have these law enforcement team members who are anxious to not miss the opportunity to use the leads. So how do you balance that?

Sarah [00:22:39] It’s so important that you brought this up. So a lot of us that do this work have really productive and collaborative relationships with prosecutors and law enforcement in our, as you said, victim centered, you know, collective approach to a problem. But it’s so important that a survivor have their own lawyer because, as you said, our interests really are different and that can come to a head in really acute and important ways that you just highlighted. So of course, we’ll just talk generally about, we’ll say, the federal government and their human trafficking prosecutions. Their job is to prosecute and pursue a sentence in a way to protect the general public, and of course, to provide punishment for the offender. And law enforcement, their interests is to investigate that human trafficking offense and, as you said, identify as many victims as possible. And those two institutions can do that in a way that’s victim centered, as you described. But that’s not their primary job. And as I said, anecdotally in our experience, they’re very good at that. But again, that’s not their guidepost. So that’s why a survivor really needs to have his or her own attorney to only be looking out for their best interests. And I’ll just give you an example that has come to mind in an experience that I’ve had on a case that I worked on. The federal government would want to pursue a significant sentence for an offender. And as we talked about, survivors have an opportunity to use their voice and impact sentencing by providing a victim impact statement. A lot of our survivors want to participate in that, and they might, as we say, share the goal of as significant as this of a sentence as possible. But some may not. And when I’m thinking of this one particular client, this client did not want to participate in the sentencing for a couple of different reasons. One, she wanted the experience to be concluded and really move on from it. But also, she was not motivated to help pursue as significant of a sentence as the government may have wanted to, sort of for her own reasons. And so it’s those important experiences where a survivor have an advocate to assert the right to not participate in the sentencing, even though law enforcement and prosecutors may be motivated to put forward, you know, as best of a case or argument for a significant sentence.

Sandie [00:25:24] OK. Wow, that is so helpful. Thank you. There is one more bucket that just holds everything, and I think I’m going to wait and do that in a separate interview, Sarah, because we have about five minutes left and I want people to understand what the NSL Collective is and what its goals are and how they can become involved.

Sarah [00:25:53] Wonderful, Dr. Morgan. I want your listeners to hear about it, too. So this is an organization that, believe it or not, got its legs during the pandemic. This was in 2020. The leadership team of the National Survivor Law Collective came together to form what I’ll just describe as a formal network of trauma informed, competent lawyers who set out to provide free legal representation to human trafficking survivors. So many of us that do this work have been doing this work for a very long time. And up until the collective, in the experience at least of those of us on the leadership team, is that there was an effective but an informal network when we were supporting survivors who had legal needs in other parts of the country where say we would reach out to, you know, an attorney that we have worked with in another state and say one of my clients has an expunction need in we’ll say California, for example, could you are your firm or organization assist with that? So we were certainly connected, but not in a way that allowed the network to grow and to provide, just really, I would say, a quick turnaround of referral. So that’s really the very simple goal of the National Survivor Law Collective at this stage, at least, is to have this network of attorneys who are part of this program and what it includes, is a listserv where when we have those needs in each of the states we posted on the listserv and I have already found that it is more efficient in how we connect survivors to lawyers in that state. It just as a matter of time, it’s just quicker to make that connection. So of course, that’s a huge benefit of the survivor who has, you know, may have an urgent legal need. So we absolutely want to grow the network because we know there’s lots of trauma informed lawyers who do this work. And, you know, the network is growing. I would say almost every day, it seems that we’re adding more participants. And in addition to hosting this platform where we can connect survivors to lawyers who do this work, together we’ve provided a number of trauma informed lawyering trainings. Because we had talked about the primary mission is to make sure that survivors have access to a trauma informed lawyer. So, of course, and it’s the responsibility of the collective to make sure that those that are part of the network have received that trauma informed training. So we try to make those trainings as available as possible, and we’re going to continue to do that. We have some training set up for some upcoming conferences and there are some virtual trainings. So we certainly want to make that trauma informed lawyering training more accessible to all lawyers who either are doing this work or want to get involved in the work.

Sandie [00:28:45] Wow. So how do they contact you?

Sarah [00:28:48] So you can Google the National Survivor Law Collective. We have a website. We have a LinkedIn page. Certainly, your listeners should feel free to reach out to me and we can talk with them about being onboarded onto the collective so they can participate in the listserv and be notified of future trainings. So I hope it’s quite accessible on the internet, as I said, is a group that’s come together over the pandemic. I think we’ve made it accessible in a virtual platform.

Sandie [00:29:16] And we’ll have all those links in our show notes as well. Sarah Byrne, you are building a pathway forward for restorative justice one attorney at a time, and I’m so excited that we get to share this message with our listeners. I have one last question before I turn it back to Dave. We have listeners in 140 countries. What’s happening elsewhere? Is there, is there a way to be involved? I know you’re involved with the United Nations.

Sarah [00:29:53] Certainly, though this may require another podcast as well, but the United Nations Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking is another extraordinary collaboration that supports survivors, but with more of a mandate on enhancing access to financial services for survivors, in addition to many other important goals related to the financial services industry. Well, that is certainly a an organization with global presence, and we see certainly there are some intersects between the legal needs and empowering the financial sector to support survivors. So that relationship exists for sure. But we’d love to see the National Survivor Law Collective grow global when we have survivors. I was on a call yesterday supporting a survivor who has a legal need in another country, and we were talking with a provider that may connect us to pro bono counsel in that country. So just like at the, you know, at the domestic level an informal network exists, but we got to make it more formal so that we can more quickly and easily connect survivors to counsel and service providers that are trauma informed, trained and competent to support them.

Sandie [00:30:59] Thank you. Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah [00:31:01] Thank you.

Dave [00:31:03] Sarah, thank you so much for your work. What an incredible, incredible conversation, Sandie, and so many opportunities for partnership. I mean, here, just within the legal lens, we’re looking at this today. Boy, if you’re if you’re involved in legal work, I certainly would invite you to take a few minutes to follow the links that we’ll have identified in this episode. And we’re inviting you also to take the first step, especially if this is perhaps the first or second episode you’ve listened to of the podcast. Hop online and download a copy of Sandie’s guide, the Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll teach you the five critical things that Sandies identified in her work that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can access that by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org. That’s also the best place to find information on the episode notes, not only for this and every other episode. One additional piece to know about is that we are, of course, hosting again the Ensure Justice conference coming up March 4th and 5th, 2022, not long from now. If you would like details on getting together with so many other partners doing this work, I’d invite you to go over to ensurejustice.com for details and early registration, and we will be back with our next episode in two weeks. As always, thanks, Sandie. See you in two weeks.

Sandie [00:32:22] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:32:23] Take care, everybody.

Dr. Sandra Morgan and Rachel Parker discuss labor trafficking outreach strategies, touching on community allyship, training and safety protocols, and outreach with and to the local community to identify labor trafficking victims.

Rachel Parker is the Anti-Human Trafficking Services Program Manager at World Relief Triad, which she had led for 10 years. She has a master’s in international studies from East Carolina University. Rachel coordinates and supervises outreach and direct services for survivors of both labor and sex trafficking, as well as supervising the coordination of the Triad Labor Trafficking Task Force, the Guilford Minor Trafficking Response Team, and the Triad Rapid Response Team to support victim identification and effective responses across Guilford, Forsyth and Davidson counties.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast, this is episode number 260 Labor Trafficking Outreach with Rachel Parker.

Production Credits [00:00:09] 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 [00:00:38] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Today, Sandie, so glad that we have an expert with us to really look at labor trafficking outreach in more detail. I’m so glad to welcome to the show today Rachel Parker. She has led World Relief Triad’s anti-human trafficking program for 10 years. She has a master’s in international studies from East Carolina University. Rachel coordinates and supervises outreach and direct services for survivors of both labor and sex trafficking, as well as supervising the coordination of the Triad Labor Trafficking Task Force, the Guilford Minor Trafficking Response Team, and the Triad Rapid Response Team to support victim identification and effective responses across Guilford, Forsyth and Davidson counties. We’re so glad to welcome you to the show, Rachel.

Rachel [00:01:32] Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Sandie [00:01:35] I’m really excited to have this conversation today, Rachel. I think in recent days I’ve talked to so many victim service providers who were surprised when they learned from the survivors that they weren’t looking for someone to rescue them. They didn’t even know that anyone was looking for them. They didn’t identify as a victim, and they often were a little concerned when people approached them that they might get in trouble or lose their job, all kinds of other things. So learning to do outreach to identify victims of labor trafficking is a little different than identifying victims of sex trafficking. And that might be one of the issues we need to be addressing to improve our record of identifying labor trafficking. So tell us what you do on the Triad Task Force and Rapid Response Team.

Rachel [00:02:47] Yeah. So our Triad Rapid Response Team actually formed in 2009, and I’ve been facilitating it or supervising the facilitation since 2012. The name says it all. It’s a rapid response. So when identification occurs and emergency services are needed, we are looking to provide those rapid services across multi counties because of course, safety, security, maybe shelters are full, all of those different things to coordinate through. And so that allows us by having a multidisciplinary team that’s collaborative to respond. However, just kind of giving you guys back history a little bit. When we looked back through our data that we collected, we were really responding to primarily sex trafficking victims and from that the members, we assessed our members and our stakeholders, that were required and vital to a rapid response. And they were around law enforcement, spice narcotics units, child and sex adult crime units, and also the domestic violence and sexual assault shelters. So we really wanted to address what we were feeling was a gap in the identification of labor trafficking because we were receiving referrals from immigration attorneys and from various community sources, but not being able to really engage from our emergency service providers about labor trafficking situations that were occurring locally. And sometimes the ones that had relocated for security, safety, and also resources. So what we found is when we sought to build this labor trafficking task force, it is connected with our rapid response team. So we are not looking to actually do any case reviews through the Labor Trafficking Task Force. It’s about really filling the gap of identification and awareness or the gap and awareness so that we can identify the situations that are more prevalent in our local communities. So they are connected with the Triad Rapid Response Team, as I mentioned. But we also found that we had a much, much more diverse stakeholder list of interested parties across our multi counties from homeless service providers, also referring to them as unhoused service providers. If you hear me refer to them as such and I’m starting to change my language a little bit. And so I’m still in the mix of that, but even working with other community service providers across the area and trying to, again, increase awareness. See, where are we going to mostly identify, begin to identify these vulnerable folks because as you said it, they may not see that what’s happening to them is a system of exploitation. We have a culture that’s very much pull it up by your bootstraps and just keep on going. And you know, the bed that you made is the bed that you’re going to lie in. So we have this lack of identification sometimes by individuals that they have more rights and more protections. And so again, that’s why we came around to the labor trafficking task forces to begin looking at the types of trafficking that were identified through Polaris Projects 25 methodologies.

Sandie [00:06:15] OK. And we’ll put a link to those 25 methodologies in our show notes. But what we’re going to do now is go over four different approaches to outreach. Unhoused vulnerability, fair outreach, begging crew outreach, and Asian victim protocols. So let’s start with why an unhoused population survey?

Rachel [00:06:42] That was a great question. So as we began to gather stakeholders for this labor trafficking task force as it was beginning and we were trying to identify, OK, what are the issues that we’re seeing locally? Where should we start? Because there’s 25 types identified through that methodology report, not all of them obviously labor trafficking, but there’s a good amount. And so where do we start? And we actually had some unhoused provider agencies at the table and they raise their hands and they’re like, well, we’re seeing this and we don’t know how to respond. We don’t know how to support the population, the clientele that we’re providing services for. But they were seeing people come into the shelters, recruit for day employment or for project employment. They were seeing recruitment during fair seasons where someone was coming back to report on multiple occasions that they weren’t getting paid what was promised. And that also in one situation that someone was forced to sleep in a box, actually. So, you know, these are some pretty egregious pieces that we were experiencing locally. And so we felt like we needed to one, come around this population as a vulnerability and see what are the other areas that we were experiencing. And so we started out we reached out to various unhoused agency providers throughout the counties, the three counties that we serve. And we learned things like, you know, finding out the best time of day to also go and do this survey because we just, you know, we happened to show up in the morning that an employer had just come in and everyone had left for a day job. And so there were only 11 people left in the whole shelter. So, you know, you just there are some unknown unplanned things that obviously happen. But we had ninety-five participants across three counties. And what we found was that 76 percent of them had identified one red flag or more of labor trafficking that they had experienced. And then we found that about 44% had experienced three or more and 36% had experienced four or more red flags of trafficking. And so we had reviewed our survey just trying to make it as specific as possible, but also being general. And so we felt very comfortable with the survey that we did utilize. But understanding that this was a first foray, this helped to kind of at least direct us some parts. And so in that, we then began to tackle the next pieces of the vulnerabilities that were specifically being targeted around unhoused individuals.

Sandie [00:09:26] So, I was pretty impressed with the questions in this survey because they were very simple and gave a lot of room for the person you’re here talking to to tell their story, really. So I don’t think that people would necessarily just answer yes or no. And I’m going to just read through these questions. And if you want to make a comment, just stop me. But I want people to understand it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find labor trafficking. It takes people being interested in what’s going on here and what am I not seeing? So the first question is it’s very conversational. Sometimes when people travel to a new area, they make an agreement with the person or people who organize their travel. Did you come to this area because you or your parents were promised work or an education? And that’s such a conversational tone, and it sets a place for having some kind of relationship. The second question, do you or your family owe something to the person or people who helped you come to this area? And third, has anyone ever held your I.D. or other legal documents without your consent? And that was the first time it seemed like a little bit more of a formal question. But I’m imagining that that’s coming at a point after you’ve had a little bit more conversation as the person tells you more of their story.

Rachel [00:11:07] Yes. Well, and actually, this was a written survey, so we engage them with some conversation, but this was actually a written survey for them.

Sandie [00:11:16] OK, I thought it was because it’s so conversational. The fourth question, and it really helps them see that they may not be the only person because it starts with it is not uncommon for people to stay in work situations that are risky or even dangerous simply because they have no other options. Have you ever worked in a place that made you feel scared or unsafe? And then it goes on, and we’ll put a link to this survey for people to look at it, to see how you might be able to do something in your area, depending on what kind of labor trafficking happens, which industry that people might be in. Was there any sense of industry specific responses in your experience?

Rachel [00:12:11] There was a few points that’s not in the aggregated data, and so I would have to actually go back and review. But mostly people were just identifying yes or no. But we did have a few instances where they did identify some of those kind of industries, as you mentioned.

Sandie [00:12:30] I was really interested in how you did fair outreach because Vanguard University is right across the street from our big fairgrounds. And I thought I’ve always seen our fair as an opportunity to do outreach to the community, have an information booth for people who come to the fair. How do you do fair outreach to the people working in the fair?

Rachel [00:12:57] Yeah, that was a big endeavor, actually. And so I also have to one, identify that we had a staff person that had helped us to create the labor trafficking task force and who worked very diligently on that survey and also in putting together the fair outreach. And so that’s Elise Riveness and she’s since left us to move on to additional career opportunities working within farmworker units, but just want to give her a quick shout out. And how she came about the fair is wanting to really engage volunteers as well. And wanting to have, we wanted to be sensitive to the community of bringing awareness and making sure that we have that component. So we felt like that was very important. And then we also had a specific prong to it, an additional prong to that outreach, where we had volunteers going out, walking into the fair at different times and they were paired together. There were, so there were two people. We didn’t want it to be big groups because we didn’t want to be overwhelming, but they went around and they just engaged the people that worked at the fair in conversations. And so we saw a lot of red flags, in particular with the migrant populations where they were asking if they would get in trouble if someone knew about them talking to us. We also saw actually people following us through the fair at different times. There was just one person that actually followed the volunteers, and just any time they tried to approach or talk to someone, they would just shout out, “they’re trying to find out something about the fair.” You know, and just kind of put it in a malignant situation or kind of look of it. So we just had to kind of gracefully back away at that time and just start again the next day. So one thing that we did is we, our fair was for two weeks and I would definitely encourage don’t try to span all of that time because you need to go in shifts. It’s exhausting as well just being walking around in the sun. And I know people get exhausted from having the fun of going to the fair, but then trying to be vigilant on that, you know, you need to have shifts that people for that and respect their time. So one of the things, though, that was really impactful is one we got to see also the living situations for the fair. And of course, you know, you have individual vendors, like this is their business and they all come together with this fair. And so you try as much as possible to make it safe as the overall fair. But you do have individuals that you know, they may know how to work the system. And so that’s why as a community, we need to be diligent to increase that awareness and create those ally ships. One particular situation, though, was it happened to be my staff that were walking together and they were fixing to approach a young man, and they were trying to figure out how to start that conversation, right? So, and just to back up, in training we did some role play to begin starting that conversation. I would definitely encourage anyone who’s putting together an outreach have that time because you think you’re going to be easy or it’s going to be easy starting those conversations and then you get nervous and so have some role play for it. So they were debating on, you know, how to engage as well. And the young man actually looked up and he was a U.S. citizen. He looked up and he said, you want to know something really weird? And they’re like, sure, tell us. And he just shared that he had come from Florida. He had met this guy at a party who had identified that he was working at a fair and that he needed someone to help kind of shoulder the load. And if this guy was willing to join him up in North Carolina at this fair. They’d split the time, he’d get free room and board, and he would be able to go and have some fun as well and still make some money. So the guy had said that, you know, a couple of my friends had actually worked with this guy, so I thought it was legit and good. But what he found out, he wasn’t getting paid for the entire time that he was there. He never got a paycheck. He never got money that he could keep. He had to give the money that he did receive at the end of the day to the guy. He found out that originally in the first couple of days, they were sharing the load. But then it stopped and the guy was having to do other business, or he was at the hotel room and he couldn’t get out there and it started to be excuses. And so he was shouldering a 10-hour day. And then when he would go to the bathroom or step away, his phone would start blowing up with, you know, why’d you leave the booth? Where are you? And so then it was a question of how is he knowing this? Are you looking, you know, is there viewing equipment around? Is there someone who has eyes on me? It really became concerning. And then as this progressed, throughout the two weeks, there became some verbal abuse and some even development towards physical abuse, as well. And so really just didn’t sit well with the young man. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t have any money because he’d spent it all getting up to there, to North Carolina from Florida. And so we were able to talk with him, identify. And whenever you do introduce that, hey, I think there’s something more here, you know, be very intentional with that conversation because it can be very overwhelming to not only process that, you know, what’s happening to you is wrong, but there may be a larger aspect to it. And, you know, people need time to process that. We were able to help him talk with a plainclothes officer that was a part of our rapid response team. And they did decide not to press charges at that time. They wanted to wait to see if they did get paid at the end of the time period, and we were able to follow up and they were not paid at the end of the time period. So they chose not to receive services, but we were also able to just plant the seed that, hey, there are service providers out there. And so the other thing I would also encourage is how do we look at success? Is it that we help someone get out of the situation? Is it that we provided services? Or is it that we provided information and a good sense of rapport that helped to alleviate the fear that this was that person’s responsibility and that they caused this? And so we want to alleviate that fear so that when they are ready, they can reach out and seek those services, if that makes sense.

Sandie [00:19:49] Absolutely, absolutely. And labor trafficking often isn’t identified because of some of those complex issues and respecting the person and their choices. We don’t always get to see justice the way we want to see that. I want to hit these other two kinds of outreach, the begging crews. Oh my goodness, this is like everywhere. How do you do begging crew outreach?

Rachel [00:20:20] So we’ve only done begging for outreach once, actually, but it was really helpful and informative, and we felt very successful as well. So I do want to kind of give some background. We had worked with some folks from a begging crew situation. My understanding from the law enforcement who would refer them to us is that this took an eight year investigation because those folks that may find themselves panhandling or begging. However, the terms are that you use that, you know, they may have gone through broken systems and there may be a lot of lack of trust that you have to be able to work through. So just kind of thinking of that and looking at that. What we had start to see is that as we were providing services to these folks, we would be going grocery shopping or taking them to an appointment. And there was one particular situation where we were exiting off of the highway and we were at a stoplight and there were two gentlemen standing by the highway. And one was holding up a sign, the other one, they were in conversation. And so one went away and laid underneath a bush in the shade, pulled out of his phone and started tapping away. And it was so eye opening to me because my client referred to that person as the pimp. And to hear the a sexualized term for me, like a commercial sex term for me applied in the situation just showed the coercion and the power and control that is now prevalent, or may be in these situations. So coming back to what we’re seeing is we have seen the emergence of organizations that are identifying as Faith-Based and religious organizations posing as addiction recovery and then as they’re getting people to come into their doors and they may say that they’ll offer different services. And in the particular situations we were working with, they were told that they’d be getting counseling and they didn’t like groups and to provide support networks. Instead, they were out fundraising and that fundraising was panhandling, essentially. And so they would pile into one vehicle, there’d be a driver. In this particular situation, the driver also is a victim, but the driver also may be the trafficker or may be a victim, just as I mentioned in this situation. So that’s something to consider. Additionally, they were moving from different localities, and so they didn’t know where they were. And I had as I provided services, they would be like, Oh, I recognize this intersection. I didn’t know we were here, you know? And so that was also eye opening. We had a situation where one of our clients had been hit by a car, actually, and they were never offered medical care. And then another one where there may be ordinances, so your community may not have an ordinance or may have an ordinance that you have to register and if you don’t, then maybe you get a citation. And in these situations, they didn’t come back around. They weren’t given transportation to respond to the citation. And so therefore they had a failure to appear and a warrant out for their arrest. So those were concerning situations that really pushed them deeper into that relationship. The other thing that we saw was criminal enterprises. So selling for using addiction or theft to keep people begging, and then the drugs were given as a quota. And that’s also with the faith based. There’s typically a quota. And I will just touch base very briefly. But we do see some youth activity groups and we’ve seen one where there was fundraising for tournaments or under the guise, well-known non-profit. But then there there was potential exploitation and labor trafficking in those. So getting back to your question, how we did it is, so we met with our team, our volunteers. We had a request from our local law enforcement. Someone had actually just happened to share with, I think, a plainclothes officer that they were being required to be out on the streets begging because of drugs. And so that kind of perked up some ears. And then they reached out to our labor trafficking task force and we were able to form this particular outreach. And so when we went, you know, obviously we met and we did a two pronged approach in this situation again as well, where a couple of days prior to actually going out trying to talk with folks that were engaged in these rings, we went to the businesses and we tried to put some materials with the businesses because what we didn’t want to do is we didn’t want to walk up to people and say, here’s some labor trafficking information, you know, we think you’re being labor trafficked. So instead, we wanted to kind of peppard around the surrounding areas where they may go into for food or for bathroom breaks or to get some water or something like that. So that and and also that we could refer them. Hey, if you’re interested, there is much more materials here in these stores. And so that was one thing we did. The other thing that we did when we we worked with law enforcement as well. So there were plainclothes unidentified cars that were there to provide safety. So it was just really adds on because we may be interrupting someone’s method of making money. And we wanted to be very conscientious of that, that we’re not causing harm to someone and we’re not putting our volunteers and ourselves in harm’s way because that doesn’t help anyone, right? And so they were around the area just to have eyes on. When we rolled up to, or when we drove up, to the intersection where the concerns had been identified around we did see it, it didn’t, there were not a lot of people around that day, whereas in other days, you know, the intersections were blanketed, so there were a lot of people on every corner and median. But in this time frame, it happened to be just a few people around. So we went to speak with a young woman. And as we were speaking with her, we had identified previously that she had gone up to a vehicle and seemed to have conversation with that vehicle. So of course, we didn’t know. Maybe there was just someone, you know, just waiting for someone to come out of a store or something like that. But we started to see consistent behavior, so it looked like there was some power and control happening. And as we began to engage this person in conversation, someone else got out of the vehicle and kind of strolled up and around and kind of looked around us and we had two people again together because we didn’t want to be overwhelming, but we didn’t want to be an individual either. So one of us was able to kind of step to the side a little bit and engage the other person. And we found out later that they did come from the same vehicle, as well. And then how we how we brought this conversation around was about allyship. It wasn’t, hey, are you being trafficked? It’s like, hey, we’re part of a task force. We understood that there may be some concerns out here, and we really want to share that there’s support services. And of course, we want it to be organic conversation. But being able to really just engage, hey, if you see someone who has this, can we share with this what this looks like so that you can help inform them of what their rights are? And so we took the onus off of the individual and kind of cast it out to this person in the future if they ever happen to see something. And so then they would ask questions and so forth, and we’d be able to respond.

Sandie [00:28:06] That is so wise. That decentralizing the conversation and using more of a bystander approach, we’re really learning a lot from the domestic violence sector in how to use that kind of strategy. Your stories are so riveting. I forget I’m supposed to be asking you questions. Our time is just running out. And so what I’d like to do now for our listeners is, can you direct us to the amazing resource pool that you have at World Relief with tool kits and resources for this?

Rachel [00:28:42] Sure. So you can go to worldrelief.org/triad or just type in World Relief Triad. And so triad being the location that we are in as we have many offices around the area. And then if they go to our work, the anti-human trafficking page will pop up and under that there will be community resources. And we’ve worked with a lot of our local providers and stakeholders to make sure that we’ve got resources that would benefit them locally and in their careers and fields. And so please definitely utilize that and also give us some feedback as well. So we’re happy to still continue to develop those.

Sandie [00:29:24] I am so grateful. This is encouraging because a lot of people care about the issues around labor trafficking, but really didn’t have any structure. One of the things that I particularly picked up from your descriptions of these outreaches is safety first for you as a worker and for the possible victim, and also being coordinated with law enforcement and making sure that training happens before you start doing such good work. And the biggest takeaway for me is having that focus on ally ship. That we are working together with the people who might be being exploited and as their allies, we want the very best for them. So, oh my goodness, this has been so enlightening. I appreciate you so much, Rachel. And I hope that we get to work together again.

Rachel [00:30:33] I appreciate it very much. Thank you, Sandie, and thank you, Dave.

Dave [00:30:37] Thank you so much, Rachel. We’re going to have all these links, of course, linked up in the episode notes. The very best way to get access to that is just go over to endinghumantrafficking.org. You can also check out in the notes in your podcast app, of course. And while you’re online there, that’s a great place also to learn more about the Anti-Human Trafficking Certificate program here at Vanguard University. Details there on the site. Plus, I’d also invite you to take the first step while you’re online. You can download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: a Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll teach you the five critical things that Sandie’s identified in her work that you should know before you’ve joined the fight against trafficking. You can get access to it at the same place endinghumantrafficking.org, and we will be back in two weeks with our very next conversation. Thanks, Sandie.

Sandie [00:31:31] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:31:31] To take care, everybody.