 Thank you for joining us for today's interactive web chat, Allies Against Human Trafficking. The International Labor Organization and Walk Free estimated in 2017 that more than 24 million people are victims of human trafficking around the world. Traffickers generate billions of dollars in profits by using force, fraud, or coercion to compel others into service, either for commercial sex or labor. A crime of this magnitude and complexity cannot be solved by any one entity alone. Governments, civil society, law enforcement, academics, survivors, and many more all have a role to play. Partnerships can help to leverage resources and expertise in the fight against human trafficking, also known as trafficking in persons or modern slavery. The private sector also has a major role to play as human trafficking exists in the supply chains of many sectors of commercial business, including tourism, shipping and transportation, online services, banking, agriculture, mining and manufacturing, among other industries. In recent years, the private sector has joined government and civil society efforts in combating trafficking and detecting and assisting victims. One very promising partnership initiative came last month when the U.S. State Department announced a groundbreaking $25 million award to the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery for transformational programs around the world to reduce the prevalence of human trafficking. This bold initiative will leverage investment from the private and public sectors to deploy innovative methods to reduce this crime globally. The U.K. government also made substantial contributions to the initiative. Here to speak with us about why forging partnerships is important are three experts who have worked extensively on this issue. Sitting to my left is Christina Bain, director of the initiative on human trafficking and modern slavery at Babson College. She focuses on the role of business and entrepreneurship in the fight against trafficking. Joining us from Houston, Texas is Meenal Patel Davis, the special advisor to Houston's mayor on human trafficking. Meenal shapes long-term systematic collaboration with stakeholders to prevent trafficking. And lastly, joining us from Tulsa, Oklahoma is Kyla Lanier, deputy director at Truckers Against Trafficking, a group that seeks to educate and power and mobilize the trucking industry to combat human trafficking as part of their regular jobs. Also with us today is a group assembled at the U.S. Consulate General in Toronto, Canada. We will introduce them in a moment and are happy to have their voice in this conversation. If you have questions for our panelists, please ask them in the chat space next to the video player or on Twitter using the hashtag end trafficking. We will try to answer as many of your questions as possible. Let's start with some broad questions for our panelists. I'll start with Christina. Can you define human trafficking for our international audiences? Thank you so much Vivian and thank you to the U.S. State Department for putting on this wonderful panel and also for the embassies that are listening from around the world today. So human trafficking as we define it here in the United States is defined within our Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which is our national law against trafficking. It is a multi-part definition and we focus on certain key language points. We look at severe forms of exploitation for sexual purposes and labor purposes and there's different subcategories underneath each of those headlines. Additionally, we talk about the harboring. When we're talking about exploitation, what's interesting about the definition of human trafficking is that you don't necessarily have to have movement. You don't necessarily have to have movement across national borders or even local borders. It's the harboring that makes it a crime and we base our definition based on the Palermo Protocol, the UN Palermo Protocol, which was created in 2000 at a transnational organized crime convention in Palermo, Italy. And about over 150 countries now globally have based their definitions of human trafficking and their national laws on the UN Palermo Protocol. Great. Thanks for that general starting point. I'm going to turn to Meenal and Kyla now. Each of you come from unique perspectives working on different aspects of trafficking issues. Can you each explain your approach to engaging with the private sector and what lessons you think are most important for others who are hoping to create their own partnerships? Meenal, I'll turn it over to you first. Sure, yeah. Thank you so much, everyone, for taking the time to sign in today. So the city really has the opportunity to work at scale to affect regulations and then has the ability to have our police department and our regulatory inspectors go ahead and enforce regulations that we might put into place to mandate things. So as far as private industry, we work with the taxi, hotel and restaurant industries. And in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, we are doing more to focus efforts on educating the corporate community about the impact their supply chain decisions can have on labor trafficking. So for taxis, we train their drivers. They also send drivers emails and text class in English and Spanish five days before, during and two days after all major events in Houston, not just the Super Bowl or any of the, you know, really big ones that get spoken about all around the world. But really all of our events are concerts and everything. With hotels, we tried very hard to encourage voluntary training and did numerous presentations with hotel associations. And really what we've learned here is that we're going to have to mandate this by city ordinance. And so we're currently drafting an ordinance that will require hotels to train and sign and post signs. So we do reach the restaurant industry through our health department who's responsible for inspecting all 13,000 food establishments in the city of Houston annually. And so their inspectors will hand out outreach cards. If there's a sufficient of trafficking, they'll anonymously note it on this report if they make a call to the national traffic and tip hotline. Now post Harvey, that has changed a lot of things here in Houston, including our trafficking response. We're doing all that we can to mitigate trafficking due to labor shortages. We did, we did see an uptick in trafficking after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. So we're developing presentations, webinars, fact sheets and our target audience is really corporations. We're a big oil and gas town. So they'll be a part of that target audience. And we hope to educate their corporate responsibility and legal teams with the business risks associated with trafficking. As far as lessons learned, the one thing I've learned is not, you know, is don't take no for an answer. If they say no to you, it's really because I think the right person is not making the ask. There is someone that they say, well, they will say yes to. And it's a really, it's really a part of making sure you're right people at the table and the right relationships and the right person making the ask. Thanks Mina. Lots of lessons for cities to replicate and certainly for cities that unfortunately are recovering from disaster. Kyla, can you give us your perspective in terms of the trucking industry? Right. Truggers against trafficking works with the US trucking and travel clause industry to educate them on the red flag indicators and the signs of human trafficking as they may intersect with it. And we're focused specifically on domestic sex trafficking, because that's what we see that they are seeing through the normal course of their jobs. We have a trucking specific training video wallet cards with red flag indicators, questions that they could ask a potential victim, as well as information that law enforcement would want in order to develop a good case and be able to investigate it thoroughly. And so what we have learned in that process is and what I would say anybody that wants to engage industry, they need to know the industry. They need to know the industry well enough that they can aggressively pursue every pathway to develop that educational point. I don't think I know tax philosophy is not to just have an awareness program. We are aggressive in our in developing those entry points and finding those entry points and getting our message out there, whether it's through the corporations who hire trucking companies to ship their products around the country, whether it's through the trucking schools, the trucking companies, the travel classes, state associations, the national trucking associations, wherever we can have an entry point, that's where we're going with this message. There's 7 million people in the US trucking industry, 3 million are CDL holders. That's a lot of eyes and ears that could really be effective in seeing trafficking and reporting it. And we want those victims recovered and we want those perpetrators arrested. Oh, thank you so much, Kyla. Christina, anything to add from your unique perspective? Thank you, Vivian. So in academia, Babson College is a is a business school located in Massachusetts and the USA. And as a as a representative academia, we look to ourselves as conveners and conveners and creating that safe space with the private sector to have a conversation. And I've worked with a number of initiatives and reporting, looking at promising practices within the private sector to combat human trafficking and within different sectors. And I think one of the most important things that we can do as the end within the anti trafficking field is to really make sure that we don't get caught up in the narrative and really trying to go out of our way to have the most perfect definition of human trafficking to have the most perfect numbers. I think that's where we lose the private sector in a lot of conversations because we get so fixated on having these absolutely perfect definitions that we lose our effectiveness. And I find that when you have a conversation with the private sector and you try to create that safe space to really share what you want to achieve and share in resources and ideas is that with the most succinct language you can achieve so much. So to keep it simple, keep it less, less is more. And I think that's really how you have an effective conversation with the private sector, especially in a convening situation. And I think you'll have tremendous things that come from that. I mean, you raised an important point, Christina, which is to be strategic about how you open the door. And that's something that's been echoed by both Meenal and Kyla, which is the entry point is so important. Let's now go to our online viewing group at the US Consulate General in Toronto, where Public Affairs Officer Anne Seixadri will introduce the group, then we'll take a couple of questions from the audience. Hello, Anne. Hello, good morning from Toronto. And thank you very much for the opportunity to have a live audience here to be with you this morning. Trafficking in person is an issue that the US Consulate is very much engaged on. And we're happy that our Consul General Juan Alsace is with us this morning, as well as a number of representatives from our various offices at the Consulate. As you know, Canada is the United States closest partner. And here in Ontario, we work very well with our local stakeholders on this issue. So we have some guests today that we'd like to introduce. We have representatives from law enforcement, including the Ontario Provincial Police. We have academics from the University of Toronto. We have representatives from the Ministry of Community and Social Services. We have representatives from the Canadian Border Services Agency. And we have friends from the NGO community. I'll mention that we also have some contacts in the banking and transportation sector, and they're online with us today. We're pleased to host this session. Toronto is the business hub of Canada, and we do sit near what is the world's longest border. As you know, Canada and the US share the largest and most integrated economic relationship of any two countries. And this climate presents great opportunities for trade, but the border also presents risks for trafficking as well. Canada has been identified as a source, transit and destination country for sex trafficking, and a destination country for men and women subject to forced labor. The majority of human trafficking victims in Canada are female and young. And the majority actually come from within Canada's borders. Young indigenous women and girls are particularly vulnerable. Each province in Canada addresses the problem differently. And one big initiative that we'd like to mention is with our with the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking. They're online with us today. And they're working with the US based NGO Polaris to establish a national hotline. And that's going to refer victims to services as well as act as a data collection point. We're all very excited about this development, which will mean that along with the existing hotlines in Mexico and the United States, the entirety of North America will be covered with a tip hotline. So thank you again, and look forward to talking with you. Thanks so much, Anya. That news about the hotline is very exciting. Does your audience have a question for us? Yes, yes. This is Antonella Argin from the University of Toronto. So I have the most general observation is really that the paramount importance of the fourth P that of partnerships which we're addressing today in addition to the three P paradigm protection, persecution and prevention. And I'm very personally glad that we're addressing that today. So the question I think can be answered by two of the members, two of the speakers. It's in relation to instilling the human rights agenda within the business agendas, because business agendas are primarily profit driven. And it's always a challenge. How to highlight the importance of preserving human rights when you're operating transnational businesses and when you're especially in relation to transnational companies and big oil companies, extractive industry, which we especially pertinent in the case of Houston. So my question is, how what are some of the challenges and possible solutions that you've had while convening these meetings with private sectors? How did you, in what ways did you try to instill that human rights agenda? What are some of the challenges that you had and some practical solutions that might be implementable across the world globally? Thank you. So business and human rights that can sometimes be challenging. So Christine, I'm going to ask you, how do you overcome some of those challenges? What are some of the solutions we were asked for practical solutions for overcoming those challenges? I think that corporations now and also even SMEs have a representative or some type of initiative going on within the company, and every company is structured differently, that is either addressing human rights, they're addressing some type of issue related to that category. But I think where you start out is you start out with a smaller conversation. I think that some companies come to the table because of varying reasons. Some companies come to the table because they've had a case. And there are some major cases of human trafficking that have happened and companies have done some really interesting things to improve it. And it's an ongoing process. And I think the thing to understand that it can be a step by step process. When we're talking about supply chains and which comes up when you're particularly talking about labor trafficking or other forms of trafficking. But within a company, when you have a supply chain, these supply chains are so complex now within these different industries. And you can have supply chains that go all around the world that go from different factory to factory. And I think you have to just start at one point and just get to the other. It will not be necessarily fast. But I think the most important thing is to start to have that conversation. And I think with it with a human rights approach, you can start to have that with one individual representative in the company or a group of people within the company will have that focus I find. So they will speak a similar language. And I think again, to go back to the what I said in the entry point is to have the simplest language possible when talking to the private sector is really important. And not to get focused on definitions. And because we're all talking the same language, this is slavery and exploitation. And there is an understanding with that. We are back to that same point of how you safely open the door to the private sector in terms of creating a promising opportunity for partnership. Toronto, do you have another question for our experts? Hello, I'm Maureen McVeigh. I represent NGO called Great. Our focus is sharing information through analysis of data, provided from external sources, police, other NGOs, anyone working in the field. My question is for Mina. In Houston, really applaud your approach to educating the taxis and hotels. And have you also thought about a school program for grade eights through to high school? As a way to educate young women and men for that matter on human trafficking. Meenal targeting young people in Houston for awareness. So we have given it a great deal of thought. The schools aren't under the purview of the mayor. So it makes it a lot more difficult, but that's when collaboration and partnerships are supposed to kick in. What we do have is partners on the mayor's task force there. They go in and provide a preventative curriculum, but it's not systematic, right? So it's whatever doors that they can get to open. They go in and they do these fantastic curriculums created by an organization here called Love 146. So the one thing we did because we did have trouble even with the mayor's office, getting into schools systematically. A lot of times what we found it's the parent teacher organizations here that were adamant that the trafficking conversation not happen in schools, which I thought was surprising. But Texas is a very conservative state here in the United States. So one of the things we did is we went to social media and purchased ads on Facebook for young adults and teens and also for caregivers. And in July, we launched a anti-learned social media campaign and purchased ads targeted to those two populations. And we've had more than a million viewers, which are more than the number of students we have in a lot of the schools here in Houston. So that aired that we started that July 24. It's wrapping up right now. We did it with Love 146. And we posted about two messages a week, both for caregivers and young adults to warn them about online safety, about recruitment in schools, about self-esteem and things like that and healthy relationships. So we kind of circumvented that by using social media. Wow, that's impressive. So speaking of social media, let's now take some questions from the chat space or those who are following along on Twitter using the hashtag and trafficking. So from an online viewer, what do the panelists suggest the family of human trafficking victims or survivors do when they cannot find any legal or pro bono help, which we know is very hard to find and locate? So Meenal, I'm going to stay with you and talking about Houston in terms of finding legal services. What do victims or survivors do or where can they turn when they cannot find legal or pro bono assistance? So there is nonprofit legal assistance that's available and they should be able to find that. I think what the issue that we see here with families is that oftentimes they have a missing child and their laws that limit law enforcement's ability to extract that child from a potential or likely trafficking situation. So for instance, traffickers know if you're 18 or 19 years old, unless you actually rat out your trafficker, there's nothing that law enforcement's going to be able to do. So a lot of times what we've had, what we've seen here with families is they've had to get the help of a private investigator. Again, a lot of families don't have access to those kinds of resources or even legal help, but there is nonprofit services available. If you call the national trafficking tip outline, they'll always refer you to a social service provider that has access to those networks here in Houston. Legal services for trafficking victims are provided by the YMCA Tawhiri Justice Center and Catholic Charities. Yes, at the American Bar Association, we've been engaged in doing some training across the country for lawyers who are interested in providing volunteer pro bono legal services for survivors of human trafficking. Often there's great interest in providing those services, but there simply isn't the training that is available for lawyers to be able to handle the range of needs of human trafficking survivors. So that's one of our priorities. And we know that organizations across this country are indeed engaged in training of lawyers who are interested in providing those volunteer services. And of course, through our national hotline, one of the referrals that are made here are to legal services. The next question is going to be for Kyla, and I'm going to start with her now. Online viewer asks, what can we do to help prevent human trafficking? And also, are there any volunteering or fundraising outreach opportunities available for people who are interested in assisting survivors? So, Kyla, what can we do in terms of prevention? I think with prevention, we have to have a national conversation as well as a home based conversation. We need to be talking to our kids. We need to be examining our own attitudes and our own speech. I used to teach high school and Pimp and Ho were just terms that were used pretty frequently. And to be a Pimp was to be cool was to be venerated as sort of hero status. And I think that we have to look at that and really understand what we're saying. And when we are making jokes about people in the sex industry that are being forced into this, I think that we have to look at that as well and examine these types of things. So, I think that these are conversations that have to be had in the home on a constant basis at a societal level where we are addressing this. When you look at the Nordic model in Sweden where they have decriminalized the prostituted person, they're teaching in schools. It's not just this law that says we're decriminalizing the prostituted person and will provide services to help them leave this life. But we're still going after traffickers and buyers of commercial sex. But they're actually teaching in the school systems this attitude that it's a human rights violation to buy another person for sex. And it's wrong and it's not acceptable. And so you have that change that's shifting there. I think for parents making sure that you know what your kid is viewing online, I think watching your fair trade, buying as much fair trade as humanly possible to prevent that labor trafficking that's happening, perhaps overseas or within the United States itself, with your agriculture, with your coffee, with your chocolate, things of that nature. I think that prevention comes in really understanding and knowing your child and being invested in their lives and really being aware of what they're doing. As far as getting involved with survivors and doing fundraising or volunteer opportunities, there are a lot of homes around the country that are both residential or outpatient where there's counseling or just the basic needs. Food, toiletries, clothing, whether that's building bags for law enforcement when they're going out and they bring in a girl that just might need a change of clothes and some basic toiletries. You could work with your local law enforcement office to build those bags and to donate there. If there's a home in your community, they're always going to have an ongoing list of needs that you can become a part of. If you are a counselor or if you are a teacher, you can lend your professional skills to work on resumes, to work on computer programming, to just invest in the lives of survivors, to help them build those practical skills that they need to go out and build a future for themselves. So I would say there's a myriad of ways that you can help. We have a resource page on our website, drarkerskinstrafficking.org that has some more information about that as well. Kyla, thanks so much. I love that you raised the issue of language, whether it's social media or traditional media, we really need to shift our language to hold traffickers accountable, to hold perpetrators of exploitation accountable in our language. Christine, I think this next question is for you. What is the role of the next generation of business leaders in anti-trafficking efforts? How can business and public policy schools contribute to the fight against human trafficking? Thank you, Vivian. So I think that the next generation of business leaders have a really crucial role to play in the fight against trafficking. And I think we can even go younger than university. Actually, at Babson College, I've been training high school and secondary school students to address human trafficking by teaching them entrepreneurship and creating a business as young entrepreneurs to solve human trafficking and mentoring, providing mentoring services and working with them over the course of a year to really have their business come into into being and also give them the resources and the tools they need financially to build a successful business to solve human trafficking. I think whether someone becomes the CEO of Coca-Cola or they create their own startup, I think they have a key role to play by imparting social impact values and ideas around human trafficking in everything that they do. So if every student leaves a business college or a public policy school with the knowledge of human trafficking, what do we have in the world? We've now created another army to fight this issue. So I think it's something that's really exciting that business schools and also public policy schools can look at and also from a public policy school perspective, those emerging public policy leaders can look to improve our laws. We've seen laws come out now both nationally here in the United States and also within other countries like the UK that are addressing the private sector in terms of fighting human trafficking. And those laws are going to are going to be improved and new laws will emerge as we look at how the private sector plays a role. So these emerging public policy leaders will be on the front lines of changing public policy for the better to further address this. Well, business public policy and human rights need not exist in separate worlds, right? So from the American corner in Kenindo in Burundi, Africa, human trafficking is real and especially in developing countries like Burundi. And the traffickers are very powerful and corruption is involved. Among the people who are sold, a big concern is young girls and women from poor backgrounds. What can NGOs and private sector partners do to mitigate that phenomenon as some victims of trafficking may be going to the U.S.? So, Christina, I'll start with you. So I think it's a combination, you know, in every obviously country and region is different, but it's a combination of education and opportunities like, and this is something that's I think U.S. centric, but it is going globally in some areas, but the idea of entrepreneurship and providing economic opportunities on the ground, I think we spent a lot of time in the anti-trafficking field on the rescue. But what happens next and what happens before? And I think that's where we get into this question of prevention. And how are we able to harness some of the resources together to create opportunities for those young girls that are culturally relevant and not also going in with the idea of what works in the United States or what works in Europe or what works in another area of the world will work in other countries or in other places, putting what works in Asia, in Africa, putting what works in Africa and Latin America, it may not necessarily fit. So I think it's also important to have culturally relevant programs when you're engaging in these types of partnerships as well and having that conversation. And you know, Houston's perspective on this, when you have survivors who come from incredibly impoverished backgrounds, in terms of partnership amongst NGOs and certainly city and the private sector, Meenal? Sure. So basically what we would emphasize here, and if there was a service provider that was speaking right now, is culturally sensitive services and a sense of community, making sure that they have that here. Houston is one of the most diverse regions in the United States. So that typically is not a problem, but ensuring that they get services that are culturally sensitive and making sure that they have a continuity in the sense of community is what I think the service provider would say if they were sitting in the seat right now. Thanks Meenal. A question from the Binational Center in Medellin, Colombia, is there a nexus between the increase of human trafficking cases and natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina? So Meenal, we'll stay with you since you are unfortunately recovering from the recent hurricane in Houston. What's your perspective? So there is definitely a nexus between human trafficking and natural disasters. What's interesting to me is that we have trafficking in the United States and we have natural disasters in the United States. But the international community is very good about making that nexus. So the International Office of Migration actually has a long list of recommendations on what to do to mitigate trafficking post disaster. And when we experienced Hurricane Harvey, we actually have to turn to the IOM regulations for recommendations, I should say. And we went step by step and executed those things. So we've taken a long look at what happened after Katrina in Louisiana. There were at least four cases of extreme labor violations or trafficking. One of the most famous cases is the Signal case, which involved highly skilled Indian workers that were trafficked that were already here in the United States on one of the visas that are available to them. And then they were basically brought into Mississippi to help rebuild and oil and gas shipyard companies, ship assets, because all of the shipbuilders had been scattered from Hurricane Katrina. And so they were kept in guarded camps. They were not promised the kind of work or pay, obviously, or living conditions or immigration assistance that they were promised here and overseas. There was a recruiter that went to India and also recruited people there, helped seminars, said come help rebuild Louisiana and after Katrina. They faced all these squalid conditions when they were here. And they say that Signal, economists estimate that Signal basically saved about $8 million by doing this and having this sort of labor scheme in place. But at the end of the day, they had a $14 million judgment against them. And they went bankrupt. And so businesses need to recognize that there's risks involved with this. That's the language we choose to speak to the corporate community here in instead of going in with like human rights language. We talked to them about risk management. We talked to them about how this can hit their bottom dollar, their bottom line. So we do see an excess here in Houston. What we've done is in the shelters, we went cop to cop and make sure we spoke to people about trafficking, about recruitment in the shelters. We also had messaging up in the dorms at the shelters to let them know about why they need to know about trafficking now because they're displaced people. They're more vulnerable to this. That was all a part of our short term response here in Houston. We do have that long term response, which is to talk to businesses about cases like Katrina, post Katrina like signal. Let's now go back to our viewing group in Toronto, Canada. Do you have two more questions for the panel? I'm from the Ministry of Community and Social Services here in Ontario. And one thing that we realized is that trafficking now is quite prevalent online. And where traffickers would typically kind of use third party advertisers to kind of advertise of the concept of trafficking. What we've realized, though, is that in kind of the recommendations or kind of the options available in trying to shut down things like Backpage.com or other third party advertisers that the advertisements would just go to more kind of underground websites that are even harder to find. And that kind of also hits law enforcement from actually utilizing that information to rescue victims of trafficking. So I guess from the panel, I was wondering if there are any kind of ideas in terms of how you're kind of able to kind of address this issue of online trafficking. Thanks so much, Christina. I think that there's a lot of conversation. Thank you for raising that right now, particularly because we have right now a debate going on in the US Congress about a particular piece of legislation that's been proposed that was raised by a number of victims who've been sold on online platforms. And it's a hotly contested debate. And it's something that, with technology, you know, we have such changing technology that's out there, it's so evolving. And how do you effectively combat it? Technology is something that has a dual, it's a dual issue. You have trafficking that is facilitated by technology, but technology can also be used to combat it. So I think that right now it's a very complex issue of how, and I'm personally still studying it, I work with the technology sector, I'm working with a group right now of technology companies in the fight against trafficking, particularly from Europe. And how is this exactly happening and raising this idea of well, does it move to another place and what does that look like? But I mean, what's clear is it's not okay to advertise people online for the purpose of exploitation. I think that's really clear. But how is it happening in terms of how it's shifting? I think that's something that we're still learning. And I think this conversation that's going on with this debate about amending the Communications Decency Act here in the United States is raising a lot of these questions right now. So law enforcement has often been under-resourced in terms of combating human trafficking. I imagine, especially in this area, do you think that there's an opportunity for partnership with the tech sector and law enforcement potentially on this issue? I think there can be. And I think that there's also this idea, again, that the way that technology can be used to facilitate trafficking and also can it be used to help in the fight against trafficking. I think there's a viewpoint sometimes that's coming from law enforcement and other actors that sometimes it's a way to find these cases because this is where they surface because trafficking is an invisible crime, which is why I think we have such a hard time defining it and why it's such an evolving definition. So I think that that is also raging on in the debate is this idea of how is technology used and what is the purpose that it will serve. So both a challenge and potentially an opportunity. Toronto, do you have another question? Hi, it's Amy from Canada Border Services in Toronto. My question is for Kyla, I think it's Kyla. I understand the eyes and ears on the road from the tracking industry is an amazing resource for domestic trafficking. And I think obviously it ties into the international trafficking, which is what my office would deal with. I'm curious as to what your numbers are from the truckers for the information that they provide on not just the domestic trafficking on information that they provide on an international basis, coming into Canada or back and forth across the border. Unfortunately, we don't have data right now from Canadian truckers on our wallet cards. We do have the Crime Stopper Sotline. We're very excited about your hotline coming out in fall of 2018 and we will be expanding truckers against trafficking into Canada as well. We're already working in Mexico so that we can cover all of North America and really get that open communication and start to see that data compiled. I think right now we have a lot of calls into the National Human Trafficking Hotline here in the US from drivers who are recognizing that what they're seeing is not just a prostitution but is actual exploitation and they're calling it in. As it's happening, we've had over 1,800 calls into the hotline identifying over 525 cases involving close to 1,000 victims and that's not the calls to 911. There's no database for that. So we just have the hotline numbers. So we do expect that to expand with Canada. We have worked with the APTA and some Canadian drivers that do cross over into the US and back and forth and they always, they're like, well, I have the number to call in the US but I only get an answering machine in Canada. So again, I do think that there's extremely great potential once this hotline opens up that we will be able to get that data because we do wanna see where these rings are operating, if victims are being transported across the borders where what companies might be involved with that. Trucking is an army that can help fight it but obviously there's bad apples in every profession and we know that there are some truckers that are complicit in both the trafficking aspects as well as the purchasing, the demand side of it. So we wanna nip that in the bud and I do think that between Mexico starting their own TAT model replication and us working in Canada, we will be able to see those numbers. Kyla, thanks. It's really exciting to hear about that kind of coverage across North America as well as the hotline, obviously the data that we've gotten from the hotline here has been really incredible. Okay, so we have some more good questions from the online viewers. First question is what is being done in the United States to prevent sex tourism? So Christina, we'll start with you on that. I think there's been some tremendous efforts. We have laws against sex tourism so when someone goes to another country and is going for the purpose of purchasing commercial sex, that is not okay in the United States and there's been some number of high level cases that have I think come out because of that that is really also putting a spotlight on the issue. Other countries are also doing some interesting things. Norway has a very rigorous anti-sex tourism law that also came about, Kyla had mentioned, the Nordic model, I believe is part of that or in conjunction with it, where they adopted the Nordic model where they decriminalize the victim in a sex trafficking equation or in a purchasing sex situation and they've prosecuted a number of Norwegian nationals who are going and purchasing commercial sex in other countries. And this is another robust online industry in terms of trafficking. For Meenal, what is the city of Houston doing to prevent labor trafficking and how is it working to influence corporations? So some of the things that we're working on is mobilizing the day labor community here. We have a worker center here called Faith and Justice and they do a great deal of work. It's a smaller nonprofit. So we have given them some grant funding to help build their capacity to increase their outreaches. There is a study here from the University of Texas at Austin that actually identified pre-harvey all of the 44 day labor corners here in Houston. They also do, this worker center also does some outreach with nannies and domestic workers in parks where they often gather. So we're working with them to revamp some of their outreach materials and make sure that we provide capacity building grants so that they could increase their outreach. Now, as far as corporations, really we kicked into gear for this after Hurricane Harvey. We have a consultant that's developed fact sheets for us, PowerPoint for us, and a webinar for us that discusses all of the post Katrina cases, not just the signal case that I mentioned, but there was a case where there were also teachers that were recruited from a California recruitment company that recruited teachers from the Philippines. So we highlight all of those cases in these materials and very soon we're gonna start that outreach. We have an organization here called the Greater Houston Partnership, which is basically leaders from all of the top corporations here in Houston. We'll start doing outreach and making some connections there. We're also talking to some of the private law firms here. I think a company's legal counsel is a great way to get them to understand how this, how trafficking can present risks to their business again. So that's what we're gonna start to do. We hope to have an event, not only with our corporate community, but even our consular community here because they can help play a role with their citizens to make sure that they make their citizens aware as well. Funding and resources for NGOs, it's so critically important for them to fully participate as partners with the private sector for that partnership to be successful. I'm glad that you raised that and that you are doing that in Houston. A question from the U.S. Embassy Guatemala. How can businesses in the tourist sector protect themselves to avoid being used by networks of human traffickers? Guatemala is trying to work with the tourism field. Christina. Thank you, that's a fantastic question. And one of the things that the travel and tourism industry, I would say was one of the first sectors to come out on the issue of human trafficking and particularly sex trafficking. And when you think of the travel and tourism industry, there's so many tentacles to it. And when you think of just the hotel and motel industry alone, it's what's happening in the hotels and motels, but it's also how the hotels and motels are built and the components that go into the hotel, whether it's the building and construction, but everything from furniture to towels to food, what's served and in the hotel itself also can be impacted by human trafficking. So I think there are a number of initiatives that have taken place within the travel and tourism industry and I see now that they're also going in the direction of looking at labor trafficking and not necessarily sex trafficking, it's both. And they're looking at things, whether it's their contractors, taking a no tolerance clause of not having any contractors that engage with human trafficking within their supply chains, as in the case of Carlson Residor, which owns Radisson Hotels and a number of restaurant chains as well. Here in the United States, they've particularly taken that stance. But it is an interesting issue because again, you do have a trafficking situation that can take place in hotels and motels. And one of the things is to really have effective employee training and also what's emerged from the travel and tourism industry. And I did a report and co-authored a report with the World Economic Forum on promising practices in the anti-trafficking industry, particularly coming from the private sector. And we feature truckers against trafficking in that. So we were thrilled to interview them. One of the things that they're seeing is that employees themselves are rising up in the travel and tourism industry and saying, I wanna make a difference in this. I've seen something and I really wanna make more employees aware of this. We've seen different models of whether it comes from the CEO at the top level or from other parts of the company. So there are a number of initiatives and exciting things that are going on that I can say within the travel and tourism sector. And for me as a hotel guest, I really feel happy if I know that this particular hotel business cares about human trafficking and is making efforts. Kyla, for you, what is the single most effective action that an average person, like a trucker, let's say, can do to combat human trafficking? I would say that making that call, being aware of the situation and then making the call as it's happening, even if it's just to talk with the hotline specialists about what they're seeing and to sort of process through that, whether it's trafficking or not, to just not let it go, to say something. And I think that through personal education, whether it's a truck driver that's watching our video, that's being educated on the issue, whether it is a hotel employee that's going to the backpack training or another, that they know what it looks like as they would encounter it and that they do something about it, that they feel empowered to do something about it in a safe place. And that's why I like the hotline because they don't have to give their name if they don't want to, but just to really walk through that and take that action step, because sometimes it is literally just a call. And I wanted to echo what Christina was saying, as well as the first question we had from Toronto. I think story is important. And I think when they hear a story about what a call did that recovered a victim out of trafficking, when they see up here of their own, whether it's another truck driver or another hotel employee that made a simple action or a taxi driver, Uber driver, that made a simple action that led to the recovery of a victim, that led to the shutting down of a trafficking ring or putting a trafficker in jail. I think that that story is powerful. And I think that the more you have those types of things put out there, the more people can relate to it on a personal level and it becomes personal. And trafficking can seem very overwhelming and really big, but when we say it's an everywhere problem, so it's an everybody solution and you feel empowered through that story to do your part, even if it's just picking up the phone, that makes a huge difference. Thanks, Kyla. And we very much do want people to pick up the phone and we're fortunate that now we have trained professionals who can respond and intervene in these situations, which brings us to the next question, which is with so many people who are interested in this issue, people do want to know how do they go about getting a victim or survivor out of a trafficking situation? Some are involved with dangerous cartels and are manipulated or drug addicted. They may not be able to ask for help. They are victims and arresting them is not the answer. Is there any advice for this and for where folks can turn? We know that having trained professionals intervene is critically important. Christina. Thank you. I think where a survivor comes from and there's also different trainings that have been done for survivors of sex trafficking versus survivors of labor trafficking. In the United States, it's very bifurcated about how you address either. And I think where we're actually finding where people are surfacing is within the medical community, which I think is something that's so critical that we train the medical community, particularly emergency room staff, on how they're addressing human trafficking. I know that there's various, and spotting it, very similar to what we see with the sexual and domestic violence movement. And when we started that conversation decades ago, I think that there's a number of initiatives that are going on where people are putting hotline numbers in different places. I mean, I don't want to speak to this. In Texas, I know that any place that serves liquor within the state of Texas, you have to post the hotline in a visible area, whether it's over a bar or somewhere in the establishment that's visible. But depending on, is a survivor having access to cell phones, I think that there's been some different studies that have been done about how much that is actually taking place about how much survivors have access to technology. In the state of Maryland, these signs are up in the women's restrooms along the major highways, for example, as well. And the hotline, well, I know we've talked about these different hotlines, but the hotline has a number of translators, languages, calling the hotline. But one of the other things that's so complicated about trafficking, a victim is not gonna necessarily look at them, it sounds like they're not gonna know what trafficking is, this term trafficking, what is that, they're being tortured, they're being raped on a daily basis. That's not gonna come necessarily to them, they just need help. So how do you effectively look at that language that's the most helpful to a survivor and a victim that they'll notice and they'll say, okay, this will be the place where I can call them out? That's why I think the medical arena is really a key place to spot for these issues. I mean, it's been about 20 years now that we have domestic violence protocols in hospital emergency rooms, things as simple as separating people when they come in. And so I can imagine that there are plenty of trafficking victims that are coming in that might answer some of those domestic violence protocols. It's critical that when those hospitals then call those agencies, that those agencies also be trained in terms of human trafficking, because they're gonna be receiving calls at domestic violence agencies as well. For Kyla, another question, what do you see happening in some parallel industries? This specific question is asking about busing and buses. Are there parallel industries that you work with where you see movement to do similar activities to what you're engaged in? We've actually launched buses on the lookout, which is a model replication by us into the bus industry. Our video will be done by the end of the year. We already have a wallet card and a webinar that's very specific to buses, to both bus drivers as well as the ticket sellers, the security that's there. And so we saw a natural overlap for us because there is law enforcement, motor vehicle enforcement, or commercial vehicle enforcement, that we already have really good relationships with around the nation that work with the trucking industry. They also work with the commercial bus industry. And so that was sort of a natural overlap to work in the bus industry. And so once our video comes out at the end of the year, we'll be hiring a director or bottle. And hopefully that will take off in the same way that the truckers against trafficking has. We consult with convenience stores against trafficking. It's a group out of Oregon that's got a national presence where they are going in and training convenience store employees on the signs of it. And then of course, we have a model replication going on in Mexico. They'll be launching Guarvianas de Las Falco, working with their trucking taxi and bus industry as well. And so I think that there is most definitely the ability to replicate our model in a number of different industries in modes and internationally. It's successful when you are able to really help people to see that they're part of the solution and putting that in the simplest language and putting that in a place where it's not so generalized, but it's very specific to their industry. You're gonna probably see this. If you do, that's what this, this is a crime, please call it in. Like don't keep looking at it as this sort of just, well, this is what happens here, but really taking that focus and making the next step. So yes, we are doing model replication. We see potential for a lot more. We would love other NGOs to contact us to get started on other industries that they feel that this would be a good place for. That's great to hear. Going back to Toronto, Canada for one more question. If not, I have a question for Meenal. Meenal, I'd love to know since there are many cities that are listening in, and your position was established as one of the first positions to serve in this coordinating capacity. How was your position established and where is the funding from? And so how was it brought to bear so that other cities could duplicate this Houston model? So Houston was often called the hub for human trafficking, even though there's never been a true prevalence study. We are the fourth largest city in the United States. So are we gonna be in the top five? Absolutely, even though a lot of trafficking, of course happens in agriculture and we're a very big urban kind of sprawl city. So the position was established because the donor community here was really pushing with the former administration that we need a position dedicated to this, not only to help coordinate NGOs, but to help advance municipal policy and systems change within city departments. There's tremendous opportunity within city departments to engage like our health department, for instance. This is often viewed as a law enforcement issue, but is also a public health issue. So the donor community did a lot of the pushing with the former administration and at the same time, we had a church here in town or a nonprofit here that helped mobilize the churches and they did a massive letter writing campaign to city hall. I think we received over 5,000 letters about the illicit massage parlor problem we have here in the city of Houston that we have done a lot to address. And so the former mayor really took all of that into account. She had already established a task force and then asked me if I would fill that position if she created it. And so of course I said yes and so that's how the position was created. As far as funding, the funding is really very controversial or was very controversial. It comes from a group of strip clubs here that have certain exemptions from a city ordinance that had made basically a lot of the strip cult strip clubs in Houston illegal overnight. So it was a big, you know, actually it was a 16 year long litigation. And so they pay about $1.2 million into a fund here and that goes to fund the human trafficking unit in the Houston police department and also goes to fund my office. So that's how it got started and that is funding streams. We are hoping to see positions like this pop up in other major cities. There's actually the NOVO foundation that just released and maybe even has, I think the deadline might be in two days here in the US where they're providing funding for positions like mine. That's great. I mean, and I think the lesson there is that in working in coalition you can bring about this kind of local change most certainly we have a few more online questions before we wrap up from the American corner in Tirana. Are there examples of the private sector supporting NGOs and providing direct assistance for victims of trafficking? Meenal, in Houston, do you have examples of that? Yeah, there are corporations that give donations and support a lot of the NGOs here in town. So the NGOs do a great job of doing independent fundraising and they're able to really pull at the heartstrings when you tell a story of a sex trafficking survivor that's gonna definitely generate some revenue for non-profit here. So we see that often all of our non-profit funders all of our non-profit organizations here excuse me have private funding from corporations. What the city tries to do is make sure that we also get them to engage in labor trafficking and looking at their time chains because that's really where I think a corporation can have the largest impact. Yes, of course it's great if they can write a $50,000 check on non-profit that's doing great work but we also think that they need to start looking at their supply chains. And one of the things that the city does themselves, you know, the city of Houston is also looking at our own procurement and the mayor's about to sign an executive order about our own supply chains. And so we try to lead by example. So we certainly have them funding the NGO community here but we also want them to pay attention about the global impact they can have based on the decision spending in their supply chain. So echoing what Kyla said earlier which is that the survivor stories can be incredibly educational but also very persuasive in terms of fundraising. Another question from IRC Djibouti in Africa. Some human trafficking victims don't consider themselves as victims because their new situation is better than the one they previously fled, their impoverished state. They attract members of their family by lying to them and becoming traffickers themselves. What can we do about that, about breaking that cycle so to speak? Christina. Yes, thank you for raising that. And I think that's something that we, I think are now beginning to really talk about is as we see this problem unfold in the modern anti-trafficking movement continues that you see victims of human trafficking who become traffickers. And there was a really interesting study that was done by the hotline for migrant workers in Israel about the profile of a Ukrainian trafficker into Israel or in the profile of an Israeli trafficker was a combination of looking at, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the flow of migration from the Ukraine when something like 80% of women in particular were unemployed in the early nine days. And what does that look like when those women were trafficked and then they were told by their pimp go back to your village and recruit your family member to come back. And it's this cycle that continues. And I've also heard of situations in coming from NGOs who are in Nepal and India working in that area where, well, okay, I'm an abrothel in India, but maybe I have the opportunity to have some freedom. And if I go back to my village in Nepal, I'm beaten by my brother and my father. This is a true story. So I'm going to stay and hope that I have some chance for freedom. So I think it's a very difficult cycle to break because you have so many layers of trauma. I think that's why prevention and adequate resources and looking at long-term economic survival and prosperity after an initial rescue, if a rescue takes place, or if someone does come forward or that they are a victim of trafficking, that there are services in place before, after, just to prevent it, I think, at the very outset, because I think once it's in that cycle, it is so complicated, and not that there is in hope, but it's so complicated to break it. So I'm going to stay with you on this issue of prevention and the question from Port-au-Prince, Hady from the embassy there, is are there any initiatives to prevent the abuse of children who are forced into begging? This isn't Hady. This isn't Hady. Yes. Right, and Hady is interesting, because you have, after they also had a natural disaster and some of the infrastructure there and some of the NGOs on the ground, tremendous organizations that are working this. Child begging is a form of labor trafficking. And we see it everywhere, and you see it, and you can see also sexual abuse, sex trafficking that also falls within it. I think it's something that you also see now with refugee populations and also with the Roma population and those who don't have statehood. I think they're particularly at risk to child begging. I think it's looking at a form of labor trafficking. How do you intervene it? Again, it's the prevention model. I think looking at how these children get forced into this, and you may see other forms of trafficking that also come about with it, like I said with sex trafficking. So again, I think the prevention piece and educating on how this crime is evolving and the forms of trafficking that child begging is a form of trafficking, and that it's not something that's, but I think also you see in some places, culturally relevant situations where it's some form of employment that's giving money to a family that desperately needs it. So is it trafficking? And you're examining the factors that make them so incredibly and intensely vulnerable. A question from Keto Ecuador, and I'm gonna ask for Houston's perspective on this. Is there a protection program at a state level for victims of trafficking who testify in a trial against perpetrators or traffickers? Meena? So there are international visa that are available to people that testify against their traffickers. For domestic people, I think that what they have is the access to services and because they are citizens of the United States, that is a protection in and of itself when it comes to this issue. So additional protections, not that I know of, but for the international victims here that are testifying, they do get certain visa protections, but again, from the state, none that I'm aware of. And at the American Bar Association, what we've heard from prosecutors across the country is that they are, again, under-resourced in terms of their capacity to investigate, but also their capacity to provide a level of protection that some witnesses and victims need on these kinds of cases. And so that brings us back to a resource question. What can we do to change the language that we use to describe trafficking or trafficking situations? For example, there's no such thing as child pornography or a child prostitute, but we continue to see those terms used by prominent persons. We continue to see those terms used in the media, in social media, in traditional media. Christina, what are your thoughts? Well, I think it's interesting because I still sit in conversations where we're trying to link pornography to trafficking. I think that there's, I've personally had, and I know others in the academy and in other areas of the anti-trafficking movement where they've had pushback, that how is pornography really linked to this, that there's no studies, there's no data, you know? And there are people who are studying this, but obviously, again, it's a form of exploitation when you're looking at adults and people who are subjected to severe forms of torture. And the pornography that we talk about, it's not necessarily Playboy Magazine and some of these things that have existed, it's really torture and violence that's coming out from the pornography industry. So I think that we're still working on language with a variety of stakeholders in terms of calling how we describe victims, I mean, and also the term victim and survivor and how we use that language is also, I think, debated. And I think it's really looking at where, when you're talking with someone who's been through this horrific crime, meeting them where they are and seeing how they are talking about it and seeing what's comfortable for them. There are some survivors who are okay with being called a survivor. And a lot of people don't want, they want to go on with their lives and they may want to have something that characterizes them as, it's an empowerment model as opposed to looking at what happened to them in the past, which is obviously carrying with them now, but how do they go on and lead a productive life and looking at more empowering language, I think is really critical in the community. From Djibouti. Oh, Kyla, yes. We train law enforcement as a part of our job as well. And we have two tap field trainers who are actually survivor leaders. They are survivors of domestic sex trafficking. And we have a whole component on the language that law enforcement uses for sure. But I think just in our day-to-day lives, when we post a story on our social media and the reporter has used the term child prostitute, I'll just put really big on the post, attention, there's no such thing as a child prostitute, write this reporter, right? And so then you have people that will go in and contact the reporter and say, hey, this is a sex trafficking victim, don't use that terminology, but making that differentiation, sort of like fighting it, just like actively saying that's actually not true. Just like prostitution is the oldest profession. No, it's not, farming is, it's the oldest oppression. It's not a victimless crime. Let's talk to actual people that have suffered through it. Just really taking a proactive stance on that language when we talk to law enforcement, we're telling them, don't call them hookers, hoes, whores, prostitutes, call them, they're not what was done to them. You need to refer to them as people, that people-first language type of a situation. So I think that active education, that active through social media, through trainings with law enforcement, through talking, when you're talking to reporters using the proper language and really stressing of the importance of it, I think all of those things come into play. And that's how we make that societal shift and that's how we make that change when we stop just, well, gosh, people keep saying it, like we need to take an active role in correcting it. Yeah, I think that sometimes changing the law is actually easier than changing people's language. From Djibouti Africa, social media is an open platform to recruit and post young men and women to become a victim. How can we prevent or tackle this issue? Christina? So in terms of tackling social media, again, this is the complexity of how technology is being used to fight trafficking and how it's being used to also facilitate it. And I think social media plays a huge role, obviously, in facilitating and recruiting, identifying people. And even what's really interesting now is we're having conversations about the situation that's going on in Hollywood. And there are known actors that are coming out and saying that they're using Twitter to recruit young boys into Hollywood for the purpose of pedophilia. And I think that there's just a really horrific conversation to be had about that. And how do we use social media as a tool and maybe to intern it over as a tool to fight it? And there's been some interesting studies that have been done by USC in California, University of Southern California, that look at how all of these social media platforms are being used to facilitate it and how they're being used to combat human trafficking. And a gentleman by the name of Mark Latanero had a grant from Microsoft with Dana Boyd, who was also affiliated with Harvard University at the time to look at this issue. And I think we're still understanding it is my best answer. We're understanding how social media is being used. And then then we can go from there to look at how we can combat it using it. So I'm gonna stay with you for the final question from the US Embassy in Guatemala. And it was about identification. If you could just briefly direct us even to a resource in terms of identification of human traffickers. Identification of human traffickers. In terms of looking at where they are in the world. How do you identify a human trafficker? Oh, in general, how do you identify? I think there are a number of resources. I mean, first of all, just what Kyla was saying on her resource page of any of the NGOs, I think, are doing a lot of work globally that you can find on their website. I think there's also probably a lot more focus on what is being done on the victim side. But there was a recent study that I believe has been published now that was done through the National Institute of Justice here in the United States on the profile of a trafficker and traffickers in US prisons. That was done through APT Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So I think that that is a really interesting resource where we learn about how traffickers recruit other victims and what they're also doing in terms of where they come from. So I think that's an interesting study to look at. Thanks, Restina. Me, no, and Kyla, if you would just be brief with your final thoughts that haven't been shared as yet. Sure, I think that there is tremendous opportunity at the municipal level. So to the extent that you have influence over city managers or mayors that are really empowered to have a lot of things executed within their city departments, there's tremendous opportunity. And if you can exert your influence to get positions like mine established, we have all of the work that we've done. We've only discussed the private sector here today, but really the city has a strategic plan posted at our website, humantraffickingkustin.org. And it's a great starting point to start talking to some of the city officials and establishing something like that. I think in the last 10 years with the trafficking fields, municipalities have not been properly engaged. Thanks, Me, no Kyla. And I would also echo that there's tremendous opportunity within the private sector, know your industry, partner with them. I mean, these are, this is an untapped resource really when you look at it globally and when you look at all of the different industries and modes of transportation and countries that we really have the potential to raise up armies in sectors all over the world to combat trafficking and we can cripple the traffickers. We can stop them from being able to maneuver so easily and so learn your industry, reach out to people that are already doing the work for the best advice, best practices, model replication practices and let's just get going on it. That would be my final thought. Thanks, Kyla.