 September 27, 2010  Stop Human Trafficking Dayton, a new non-governmental organization based in the city to combat human trafficking locally, hosted its first annual conference on Thursday, Sept. 23, at the Dayton Racquet Club. The event was hosted in partnership with the University of Dayton's human rights program in order to raise awareness about human trafficking. The conference opened with two interpretive dances by students at the Stivers School of Arts, which were followed by four speakers, considered to have an expertise in the field of combating human trafficking. These speakers included Dawn Conway, senior vice president of corporate responsibility at LexisNexis; Todd Dieffenderfer, special advisor to Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray; Jim Slagle, chief of the criminal justice section at the Ohio Attorney General's office; and Jeffery Barrows, founder and executive director of Gracehaven, a group home and rehabilitation center for young female victims of sex trafficking. Conway works with LexisNexis, a Dayton-based national corporation, to improve its supply chain and raise awareness about trafficking worldwide. LexisNexis has partnered with the Polaris Project, a national non-governmental organization aiming to eliminate trafficking and to raise money to fund a national hotline for trafficking victims. The corporation has donated $5 million to date toward this movement. LexisNexis also is working to pass Senate Bill 235, sponsored by Sen. Teresa Fedor. According to Conway, Ohio is one of only five states to not have comprehensive legislation to fight human trafficking, and this bill will help Ohio accomplish that. "Penalties would be appropriate, and penalties would be clear [under this new law]," Dieffenderfer said. "By working together, we will definitely make a difference on this issue." The Ohio attorney general's office also is attempting to raise awareness and combat this crime in the state, according to Slagle. "For most of the public, human trafficking isn't high on their radar," Slagle said. According to Slagle, there is hope that the bill will be passed soon after mid-term elections this November. Another speaker, Jeffery Barrows, is helping to fight trafficking in a more personal way. He founded Gracehaven, a shelter near Columbus that will house victims of sex trafficking and counsel them through their hardships. This will be the first shelter for trafficked girls in the area - The closest similar organization is in Atlanta. According to Barrows, there are a minimum of 1,000 underage sex trafficking victims currently in Ohio. If populations are broken down, this means that at least 50 victims are in the Dayton community. Sex trafficking victims are among the most traumatized survivors of shocking events, often suffering more than war veterans, Barrows said. To find out more information about the organization, go to stophumantraffickingdayton.org. To read about Senate Bill 235, go to http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=128_SB_235. | |
| Source: flyernews.com | |
 Members of the University of Dayton community are pioneering to combat the ongoing issue of human trafficking this year through participation in a new and innovative course. Dr. Anthony Talbott, lecturer for the political science department, is teaching 62 undergraduate students this semester in one of the first undergraduate courses in the country geared toward the study of human trafficking. The POL 300 class, called Human Trafficking, is currently offered from 3 to 4:15 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. Human trafficking is a type of slavery in which people are dehumanized and forced to comply with sex or labor. It is both a national and international issue that hides in plain sight and often goes unnoticed and ignored. "This class is pretty daunting because it's one of the first," Talbott said. "But the challenge involved is exciting. It's not just an academic course; it's a service learning course, and the main objective is to produce effective, modern abolitionists." The material presented in the class encourages students to fight for change and promote human rights, specifically in the human trafficking realm, according to Talbott. It is estimated that 27 million people are enslaved today, which is more than double the amount of slaves during the transatlantic slave trade, according to Alisa Bartel, a graduate student in public administration and one of Talbott's teaching assistants. Human trafficking is not only an international issue, but a national crisis as well, even in the state of Ohio. Between 100,000 and 300,000 U.S. citizens are enslaved in the U.S., and Toledo, Ohio, is the number four city in providing the most traffickers and luring the most underage girls into prostitution, according to Bartel. Talbott said he wants his students to learn how to fight the injustice by providing them with the adequate tools to become abolitionists for the cause. By further understanding the issue, students can be better prepared to recognize a problem that no one wants to see and increase awareness in the public eye, he said. Talbott said he chose to focus on undergraduate students for this course because many of them had expressed interest in learning more about human trafficking. Last year's Human Trafficking Accords international conference was a success at the university, and when a number of undergraduate students showed a mass interest, Talbott saw a need for the course. "Being a political science and human rights major, there are certain issues you come in feeling very strongly about, and for me this is one of them," said senior Mary Aggazio, a member of Talbott's class. "This class drives you to want to do something about this issue in some way." Bartel and Alex Krieidenweis, a graduate student in the public administration program and Bartel's fellow teaching assistant, also created change through the Human Trafficking Accords conference. After the conference, they co-founded the New Abolitionist Movement, a student organization at UD that shares Talbott's goal of eliminating human trafficking and has since lobbied for stronger laws against it. In 2000, the U.S. passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which aims to fight human trafficking through prevention of the act, protection of the victims and prosecution of the offenders. The TVPA changed the mindset and attitude of law enforcement and government, according to Talbott. He said he hopes to recruit more students from various majors across the university such as criminal justice, psychology, education, business and social work to expand the range of awareness about human trafficking, as well as provide more services for victims. "Human trafficking is a major human rights problem in the world, the most serious one we have today," Talbott said. "We can't just focus on one aspect of it. We need social workers, researchers, increased training, law enforcement. We need to increase public awareness. If we do all that, I don't see why we can't greatly reduce trafficking in the U.S. during our lifetimes." Flyer News | |
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