Saturday, December 5, 2009

Stop Child Trafficking Now

Over the summer, I heard about a walk that was taking place in September 2009. This walk was being held in order to raise awareness on human trafficking, specifically child trafficking, occurring internationally and domestically. When I was first informed on this event, I was shocked that such an issue even existed. I knew prostitution was something that not many people addressed, but I had no idea that groups were deliberately selling human beings for sex or slavery. It may have been naive of me to believe that slavery ended after the Civil War, but because of my educational experiences, I realized how corrupt society, and sadly, government are.

Child trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world. It is the recruitment, smuggling, transporting, harboring, buying or selling of a child through force, threats, fraud, deception, or coercion for the purposes of exploitation, prostitution, pornography, migrant work, sweat shops, domestic servitude, forced labor, bondage, peonage or involuntary servitude. The reason for child trafficking is because of the demand for it.


I decided to be proactive and create a team to become involved in SCTNow. As a team, we had to raise awareness and funds in order to take action. The donations received are being used to "fundraise organizations comprised of Special Operative Teams who gather information about child predators both in the US and abroad. These teams represent the best military, federal and state intelligence and investigative organizations. They track predators to build cases against them that result in convictions."

The process before the walk took more time because we a lot of effort was necessary in order to ask for support. However, while we were at the event, I was able to interact with proactive staff members and founders. These people have such a great passion to put an end to human trafficking, not just to see the demand decrease.


3 comments:

  1. Similar to you Priscilla, I didn't even realize that child trafficking is something that occurs in the United States. For some reason, I thought this only happened in countries with terrible systems of government that allows people to get away with this kind of stuff. It is truly disgusting that this kind of evil happens in the U.S. or anywhere for that matter.

    Your report from this event, however, did restore some sense of hope! When I read, “child trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world…the reason for child trafficking is because of the demand for it”, I immediately thought about what can be done to stop this! The tracking of the predators really does make sense and I think it is going to make a huge difference for future child trafficking. It is still upsetting that there are thousands and thousands of children that are locked away being forced to be servants or sex slaves and it would be really difficult to rescue all of them since the people already have them. It really makes me sick to my stomach. Thank you for sharing.

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  2. Similar to both Karla and Priscilla i did not realize that child trafficking is something that occurred in the US, I thought it only occurred in countries with poor government. It is truly disheartening that this happening anywhere let alone in our country which has a decedent government. Priscilla its great that you are you are being proactive in helping this horrible thing come to an end. Your hard work will pay off and children will be thankful.

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  3. I actually learned about the severity of child trafficking through my mom, who is always telling me about the worst news because she is paranoid. Once I had learned of the issue though, it was eye-opening to learn some of the facts that were out there. My dorm actually held an event where they viewed a movie on human trafficking (not specifically children) and again the reality of this situation is saddening, and I think walks and events like the one you attended are so necessary to raise awareness in the world. It sounds like this was a great experience.

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