15 – Homelessness and Human Trafficking: How They Connect

This episode is brought to you by Vanguard University and the Global Center for Women and Justice, who offer an incredible anti-human trafficking certificate. Whether you're a frontline responder, a social worker, in the ministry, a healthcare provider, or simply a community member who wants to help, this program is built for you. Head over to gcwj.org/ahtc to take the next step and apply today. 

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Sandra Morgan and Dave Stachowiak discuss how homelessness is a factor that can lead a person to become a victim of trafficking. They take a look at the statistics of youth who are homeless and how it relates to human trafficking discussing what we can do to help.

Key Points

• 1.3 million runaway homeless youth live in America.
• 57% of homeless kids spend at least one day every month without food.
• 25% of foster kids become homeless within two years of leaving the system.
• 4 distinct homeless youth populations: Runaway minors, expelled youth, system youth, and street youth.
• It’s about survival, when someone offers youth an opportunity to make money or offers them a place to sleep, the kids will do what they can to survive.
• 55% of street girls engage in some form of commercial sexual exploitation.
• 1 in 5 become entangled in some sort of organized crime network.

Resources

• Solidarity Sleepout
• EP. 6 – Maria’s Human Trafficking Story
• Ensure Justice Conference
• Covenant House

[Note from the Ending Human Trafficking podcast team: This episode was recorded in 2011 so the contact information provided is no longer accurate. Please refer endinghumantrafficking.org/contact for the correct contact information to get in touch with the EHT podcast.]

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Transcript

Dave: You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast; this is episode number 15, recorded in October 2011. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast, my name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie: And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave: And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, we are back today to talk about another lens to look through prevention of human trafficking with, and that is the lens of homelessness, and homelessness is unfortunately a major factor and a contributing factor in many cases, the start of the human trafficking chain that we’ve talked about many times before.

Sandie: Homelessness is a contributing factor; it’s a precursor, it’s part of the pool of easily assessable victims that traffickers have to draw from.

Dave: SO before we jump in and talk about homelessness and how homelessness becomes a factor in human trafficking, Sandie, a couple of things for our audience to know up front is were talking about this topic today, you inevitably will have some questions for us, and we have a number of questions from our audience here today that we’ll address in our show today from your past feedback, but if you have questions for us, you should hop onto email and send us an email to GCWJ@vanguard.edu and that goes directly to Sandie’s office at the Global Center for Women and Justice here at Vanguard University, and of course you are able to call in with a question too, and Sandie, folk can reach us by phone at?

Sandie: (714) 556-3610 ext. 2242. Leave us a voicemail and we will get back to you.

Dave: There are also a couple of things coming up that the Center is involved with, Sandie, that we should let folks know about, one of them is, there is a web-x online now about community engagement. Could you share just a little bit more about that?

Sandie: We were asked to do national web-x training for the best practices for community engagement by the Health and Human Services anti-human trafficking office in Washington.  That web-x is now available online, you can go and listen and watch the PowerPoint and get some tips.

Dave: And that’s on our website at GCWJ.vanguard.edu. You can find the Global Center for Women and Justice page there, the other thing you will find is information on the upcoming solidarity sleep-out, and that’s actually coming up here in Southern California on November 18th, and 19th, and Sandie you are involved in this in a big way.

Sandie: Oh, you better believe it. I am going to sleep outside with all of our Vanguard students who are working very hard to spread awareness for the issue of homeless youth, and so were going to start at 7pm, we’ll have a program to draw more attention to this problem, and we are going to stay outside and not go home to sleep in our comfortable beds.

Dave: And the hope for this event is that it will raise awareness for what its like to be in that position in life where you don’t have a place to call home.

Sandie: And to understand how many young people are in this situation and that there are things we can do to change that. This is also a fundraising opportunity so that we can provide resources to homeless youth in our own county.

Dave: And if you are ...