This topic is not as random as it might seem at first blush. My executive clients tend to be movers and shakers and global leaders.  Almost every successful person I know has a cause that is close to the heart. My cause is abolition of modern-day slavery.  On January 4th, President Obama declared January 2010 National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention month. January 11th was designated National Human Trafficking Awareness Day in 2007, and he is continuing support of awareness, and now prevention.

Human trafficking is modern day slavery.  Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry on the globe, and includes recruiting, harboring, and transporting people for the purpose of exploitation.  Billions of dollars are generated every year from the victimization of people forced or coerced into labor and/or sexual exploitation. Labor trafficking includes farming, sweatshops, and domestic servitude, and sex trafficking includes prostitution, pornography, bride trafficking, and the commercial abuse of children.

17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked in the US annually, and an estimated 200,000 American children are at high risk for trafficking into the sex industry every year. We believe these numbers are very conservative, since for every crime statistic we have documented, there are many that go uncaught. Domestic trafficking within the US, within its own borders is on the rise and denied by many Americans (”it only happens in poverty-ridden countries”).

The truth is that the US has a large hunger for sexual exploitation, and creates its own internal demand. According to the Polaris Project in Washington DC, one of the largest forms of domestic sex trafficking in the US involves traffickers who coerce women and children to enter the commercial sex industry through the use of a variety of recruitment and control mechanisms in strip clubs, street-based prostitution, escort services, and brothels.  Domestic sex traffickers, commony refferred to as pimps, particularly target vulnerable youth, such as runaway and homeless youth, and reinforce the reality that the average age of entry into prostitution is 12-13 years old in the US. Recent cases have demonstrated that labor trafficking of US citizens occurs in locations such as restauarants, agriculture, traveling carnivals, peddling/begging rings, and in travelling sales crews.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

How to be part of the problem:

1. Use Internet porn. The person you are looking at on screen is someone’s daughter and someone’s granddaughter.

2. Deny that this problem exists by perpetuating myths. (” it only happens in poor metropolitan areas, and it’s only bad kids that end up exploited, it doesn’t happen in our neighborhood, etc”)

How to be part of the solution:

1. Learn about the issue.  Visit www.sharedhope.org and learn what you can. Request the free book “Renting Lacy” with a donation of any amount.  Read it and tell everyone you know to get a copy and read it. www.rentinglacy.com

2. Tell your church, your civic organization, and any club you belong to that you’d like to have a speaker come talk to the group about how you can help.  We have 6 easy action steps.  If they are interested, contact me and one of our speakers will come visit your group and talk more. julia@mentaliron.com

If you suspect a human trafficking situation call the National Human trafficking Resource Center Hotline. 1-888-3737-888.

Tags: Activism, Add new tag, Coach, coaching, Executive Coach, executive coaching, Human Trafficking, Leadership, Modern-Day Abolitionists, Philanthropy, Slavery

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Abolition, Activism, Executive Coach, Executive Performance Coach, Executive pERFORMANCE cOACHING, Exploitation, Free Books, Human Trafficking, Leadership, Slavery, Uncategorized, executive coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.