Forum Raises “Viral Voice” Against Human Trafficking

Posted on 27. Oct, 2009 by Crystal Um in Feature

Carlsbad, San Diego—On October 8-9, 2009, the leading activists of human trafficking gathered for the first annual Global Forum, designed to strategize a slave-free future by mobilizing teachers, students, and businesses to end modern slavery. Forum participants discussed domestic as well as international issues, and engaged in three breakout sessions of their choice to implement entrepreneurial strategies as well as global policies for treatment of the issue. Forum representatives included Bay Area Co-Director of MISSSEY, to Not For Sale’s Peru project founder, Lucy Borja, and the Not For Sale Campaign California State Director, Stephanie Voorkamp with entrepreneur David Arkless.

Nola Brantley, Co-Director of MISSSEY, Motivating, Inspiring, and Supporting and Serving Sexually Exploited Youth, served as a panelist for the breakout session titled “Innovative Models of Survivor Care,” Brantley was the first intensive case management treatment service model and programs for commercially sexually exploited children to receive specialized advocacy and assessment in Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center, the development and implementation of a transition and recovery center for commercially sexually exploited children in Oakland.

Brantley indicated how 90 percent of the victims are American children in the foster care system. These children were removed from biological care on the premise of protection, only to be used as consumer exploitation for street and Internet prostitution purposes. Brantley discussed the 2002-2003 cases where groups of 3-5 children under 18 were arrested upon the charges of prostitution to demonstrate how there were no concrete systems in place for domestic cases of sexual exploitation. Brantley served as an advocate for these children who were prosecuted under the 647B Prostitution charges because of the discrepancies between the law and how the children were processed legally in Alameda House Justice Centers. “Domestic cases do not have the same protection resources as international cases,” Brantley said. “Our kids are falling through the cracks.”

The reoccurring cases of trafficked minors were also validated by Lucy Borja, who created Generacion, a Not for Sale International project providing prevention and aftercare programs to street children in order to develop entrepreneurial economic life skills in Lima, Peru. “Children do not share in the same freedom as adults, and are not even regarded as citizens,” Borja said. According to Borja, Children are arrested and sent to juvenile hall on the basis of polluting the public environment—an outcry made by local residents who shun the children as decreasing their property value. There are many instances of children being shot and abused by criminal enforcement and exploiters. The traffickers target children who have no one to turn to, forcing them to be dependent suppliers of their demands.

Borja has worked with the government to create homes and opportunities for the children who have been marginalized by the system. They were able to start a landscaping business with the government to provide for basic needs for the women and children, as well as a means of preventing re-victimization by their exploiters. In addition to recreational life skills, empowerment is also employed as a method for prevention. Borja believes in the power of theatre, music, and surfing to promote social change in an environment where children can tell their own stories to educate others in the safety of school settings.

The marginalized victims living in impoverished homes are a distinguished trend of human trafficking cases in Lima, Peru, and around the globe. Entrepreneur, David Ormesher, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Closerlook, Inc., and Adjunct Professor of Customer Management at the IIT Stuart Graduate School of Business, Chicago, IL, proposed entrepreneurial solutions to crisis to promote change, as evidenced with Borja’s landscaping business in Peru. He emphasized how human trafficking could not be undermined unless strategic objectives were employed along with mutual partnership of developing countries to combat poverty. The demand for social enterprise businesses have been growing with grants up to $20,000 for ideas to advance sustainable practices and public engagement. Currently, Rwanda has been receptive to social enterprise policies, and has streamlined investment options so that an outside investor is entitled to 50 percent of the invested amount or used assets. Freeplay Energy, one example of a successful social enterprise in Rwanda, replaced dangerous kerosene lights with sustainable, cost-efficient sunlight and “wind-up” technology lanterns. Unlike conventional business models, the challenge of social enterprises like Freeplay Energy was to create a capital based on the average earnings of the demographic. The dollar-a-day approach was used to make Freeplay Energy as affordable as kerosene, yet renewable for a lifetime.

Sustainability and entrepreneurship may be the solution according to Stephanie Voorkamp, Director of Business Development for the Not for Sale Campaign. Voorkamp, who recently took over the Not For Sale Freedom store a couple months ago, endeavors to reform the consumer culture that contributes to the flourishing business of trafficking. The antithesis of slave-driven business models, Voorkamp’s Freedom Store is comprised of low-income artisans and rescued victims who supply the basic needs of the consumer, and provide a way of escape to those held bondage by the leading cause of human trafficking—poverty. Like Freeplay Energy’s social enterprise, Voorkamp’s global market models promote sustainability as it is utilized as a resource for further education and financial independence.

Entrepreneurship strategies to combat the multimillion-dollar business of human trafficking was also the forefront of abolitionist David Arkless, President of Corporate and Governmental Affairs, Manpower, Inc. “Gangs set up trafficking rings as a business,” Arkless explained. “The only way to stop them is to cut off supply and demand situations.” Arkless’s current objective is to change human resource policies, and to create a code of conduct for employees of worldwide suppliers, as stated in his Athens’s Declaration. The Athens’s Declaration forbids employees from hiring prostitutes on business trips, and requires the company to check supply chains. Arkless’s vision for global strength relies on research, data, surveillance, verification, communication but most importantly, individuals to raise their “viral voices” in bringing redemption and freedom to the slaves.

Resources:
European Journal on Human Trafficking
Not For Sale Campaign Investigator Academy
How to Identify Trafficking