Greetings, Fellow Anti-Trafficking Advocates,
Welcome to fall! We have been busy, as always, engaging students to work against trafficking; providing training to foster care parents and hotel staff; developing relationships and opening avenues of collaboration across the state; and attending an Annual Conference on Human Trafficking in Chicago – and we have no plans of slowing down.
Beginning this month, the Network Against Human Trafficking is posting a statewide events calendar for anti-trafficking programming and activities. The calendar is up and running and you can post your events as well. Just visit our website, click on the “calendar” tab and then “submit event” – or send us a note and we will post for you.
I want to take a moment to highlight two events that might be of particular interest to you:
On September 14th, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Nicholas Kristof will be speaking at Iowa State University. His talk, “Why We Should Care About the World and Want to Change It”, seeks to combat human trafficking by empowering women around the world and by engaging men as allies.
Luis CdeBaca, former US Ambassador in the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, will speak at Iowa State University (his alma mater!) on January 19th. His talk will address the Fight Against Child Abuse and Sexual Assault.
More information on both of these events and more than a dozen others are available on our website calendar.
As you know, the NAHT, alongside numerous organizations and advocates across Iowa, successfully advocated for legislation to increase Iowa’s penalties against human trafficking and provide funding to train law enforcement, justice professionals, service providers, and 911 dispatchers. Funding for community outreach and education, a critical component of prevention and intervention, was also granted.
In response to this year’s legislative successes, we invite you to do the following:
- Thank your legislators for their support of anti-trafficking legislation and the necessary funding to enact it. We earlier posted information on how to do this to the NAHT website, and it is still available.
- Contact your county attorney and ask her or him to enact Iowa’s anti-trafficking legislation, per the advocacy letter to county attorneys posted to the NAHT website. You may download this letter and mail it or copy it to an email.
- Invite a speaker from a local anti-trafficking organization to speak at a community event or to a local organization or faith gathering. The NAHT can assist with finding speakers; and we encourage you to organize events which will reach members of your community or local groups who want to get involved. Once you do organize an event, consider serving as a speaker in your community yourself! We can help you individually or provide training to a group of prospective speakers in your community.
- Bring information about human trafficking into your local schools. Two NAHT affiliates, Braking Traffik and Teens Against Human Trafficking, have developed age-appropriate anti-trafficking curricula for schools. Please contact us to bring one of these programs to your district.
- Support your local or regional homeless youth or young adult shelter. If you can help to protect these vulnerable persons, traffickers will have a lesser chance of recruiting them into slavery.
- Donate to the NAHT to support our ongoing efforts. Most of our work is volunteer, yet we need funding to cover the cost of a part-time staff member, travel expenses, materials production, and our ongoing outreach to communities, hospitals, social service providers, attorneys, health care providers, and youth at risk of trafficking victimization.
The Network Against Human Trafficking is making a difference in Iowa, and we need your financial support, as well as your participation in advocacy.
Together, we are saving lives, and we thank you for your heartfelt engagement in this social movement.
-Teresa Downing-Matibag, Executive Director