The Alternative Spring Break: Anti-Human Trafficking Immersion and Social Justice Education was an incredible experience for all involved. Seven students and two sponsors traveled to Houston for five days to study how city leaders and organizations are combating modern day slavery at home and abroad. We got to pick the brains of experts leading the way in anti-human trafficking efforts from several sectors including social workers, NGOs, social service groups, faith based organizations, federal prosecutors and academics.
The students’ familiarity with modern day slavery pre-trip ranged from having no experience with the issue to having pursued academic study and research on the issue. With such a spectrum of knowledge represented, our discussion and reflection time each night was lively and fruitful; and especially demonstrated that our day’s work offered a wealth of new information and a challenging, transformative experience for everyone. Our conversation was guided by the students’ own promptings, questions in our curricular guide and also material that students posted on their blogs.
The most important outcome achieved was that students received a panoptic view of the issue: some of the agencies and community partners that we visited were able to raise the issue in light the students had yet to consider. Because each different site visited presented the modern day slavery from a different standpoint (depending on the angle from which they were tackling the issue, whether it be as a case manager, or as a litigator, or as a professor, or as a Christian in ministry, or as a university student, or as a former victim), the students were forced to consider the issue from a rigorously critical standpoint, measuring several different perspectives as they formed their own views.
Another hugely significant outcome is that students’ visions for how to tackle modern day slavery once back in Waco were vastly expanded. Next week IJM (Baylor organization of which many of the trip’s participants are members) will host Justice Week and focus its advocacy events on anti-human trafficking. At two of the advocacy groups that we visited, students were given new ideas for ways to powerfully probe discussion and reflection on this issue; including a participatory art project (see photo on blog). Students will continue to execute these ideas in coming semesters as several of the trip’s participants are underclassman who are on their way to becoming leaders of IJM as well as our campus at large. On an even more impactful scale, students got to observe firsthand the ways Houston has effectively combated trafficking. The reason Houston’s anti-human trafficking efforts are so impressive is that sectors that usually don’t communicate have begun to align their efforts and work together. For the first time, federal prosecutors and social workers are humbling themselves to see an issue from the other’s perspective. As one of the federal prosecutors shared with us, at the first meetings of the anti-trafficking taskforce (which comprised many of the sites we visited), a social worker shouted across the room at him: “You could care less about the victim—all you’re worried about is putting the criminals away.” A few years later, the taskforce has come a long way and the city has accomplished so much change. A similar taskforce is so needed in Waco, and we believe that working with a Baylor professor, students have the potential to assemble a best practices/recommendations report to local law enforcement and law enforcement for Waco’s implementation. We met with a student group from the University of Saint Thomas who conducted similar research for Harris County attorneys.
The reach of this trip has already extended beyond the attending students and sponsors; they each have committed not to allow this societal ill to go unacknowledged—and the campus, the Waco community and their future communities will not go unchanged. Your diversity enhancement grant helped pay for our housing and honorariums shared with each site visited; not only did your support allow students this front-line learning experience, but also went to help the heroes we observed to continue in their noble work.
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