On Tuesday, September 26th, The Salvation Army provided a fantastic training on human trafficking awareness and response to service provider staff throughout the Greater Hartford community. We were able to send three of our Journey Home staff to the training held at Capitol Region Mental Health Center with trainer Krystal Ambrozaitis. It was a great training where our staff were able to learn a lot and bring back knowledge to share with our office.
The training covered a wide range of topics, including how to identify a victim of human trafficking, common terms of human trafficking, how to provide resources for the victims, and more. The topic of human trafficking is very relevant, not only to our staff in the field, but for all people through Connecticut, the United States, and the world. Many think of human trafficking happening outside of the United States, but this issue is happening in all 50 states.
There were many moments throughout the training that were shocking and troubling, but also very empowering. Through this training we were able to learn the knowledge to help prevent and recognize human trafficking. This event gave us the skills to make a difference in our communities.
Some of the surprising facts about human trafficking included that 1 in 3 missing persons will be approached by a pimp or trafficker within 48 hours, 1 in 6 runaway children becomes a victim of sex trafficking in the United States, and between 14,500 and 17,500 human beings are trafficked into the United States annually.
To learn more about Human Trafficking we recommend that everyone visit the Polaris Project website, which lists the 25 forms of human trafficking and has more information to become educated on how to prevent and stop human trafficking.
We would like to thank Salvation Army for equipping so many of us with the knowledge and tools we need to better identify and report human trafficking and how to connect victims to resources they need.