There are close to fifty million slaves on planet earth, grossing $150 Billion in illicit profits. These slaves are primarily used in labor and the sex trade. There is more and heightened awareness on human trafficking than ever before, whether it be law enforcement, various industries, down to parental units.
Nevertheless, parents let their children roam freely on the Internet with the amplified possibility of being groomed and sexually traded. Somehow, we must move human trafficking awareness from institutions, i.e., police, government, etc. to the mainstream communities and thus to parents. Otherwise, human trafficking will continue to grow wildly out of control. Something must be done about it and the Protecting Our Communities Program is the solution. Get the word out! Disseminate our booklets everywhere. Let your community lead the way and put an end to this most heinous of crimes.
The Plan
We want to coordinate with national and local businesses to provide our book to their working parents to educate at the grass roots level. The book carefully lays out how to protect families from the ravages of human trafficking. 55 Things All Parents and Grandparents Should Know About the Internet and Commercial Exploitation! Businesses and other organizations should provide this book on protecting our children to their employees who are parents and grandparents.
Think Of It as a Neighborhood Watch for Trafficking!
When examining what are the greatest threats to our communities, several factors come to mind. There are the usual concerns from disease to accidents. But there is another that looms over our society in bold letters HUMAN TRAFFICKING. Human trafficking is a hidden danger that is rarely discussed at the community level. Human slavery is something that happens over there someplace but not in our neighborhood.
Anecdotal Evidence
Not so long ago there was a house a couple of blocks from where I lived in just a normal average American neighborhood. This particular house did not stand out from the others. Perhaps there was a little more traffic but nothing that would raise an alarm. However, this was not an ordinary house. No, there was nothing ordinary about it for trapped in this house were a dozen women from parts unknown that were being prostituted, trafficked if you will without their consent. No one was the wiser. Fortunately, their secret was discovered, and those women are now free of their traffickers. But this phenomenon goes on repeatedly albeit with some modifications but the same result. In some cases, it is our children that are being trafficked and we want to tell you more about this and what can and should be done about it.
A Business Solution
Most businesses are worried about productivity when it comes to employees. Employee retention is particularly important to a business as replacing an employee is expensive. Having staff vacancies or worried and concerned parents because of their children going missing is not only tragic, but also a detriment to productivity.
The Work-a-Day Dilemma
When a parent or grandparent has a child who’s in trouble and they don’t know how to help him they're not working at their highest productivity. When I led the nonprofit the Heidi Search Center, we searched for missing teens and young adults. Today it still makes me tear up when I think about a parent coming in and saying “I have to find my child and how do I decide whether to go to work and keep money coming in, so I can actually use that money to find my child or do I stop going to work and find my child, but how long will that take? Which do I do? I don’t know how to answer this question and I’m desperate because even when I’m at work, I can’t work at my usual level. I’m sleep deprived, nervous, hyper-vigilant, scared, traumatized, crying and suffering. I must answer my phone, if I don’t and it’s my child calling, or the police or some tip from a flier that I need and I missed the call I could lose my child forever. I don’t have the luxury of letting it go to voicemail. I know I’m going to get fired but I must answer my phone. I know I should do better, but I don’t know how.”
Put Yourself in that Position
What if your choice was to do my job or lose my child? What if it was ongoing, not just for a short moment but weeks, months, maybe even years? Can you imagine the decrease in your company’s productivity? If you have employees with this problem, you will lose them, even if only partially. Just from a business point of view an employee who cannot put uncompromised on their job is a serious problem. A problem that you can help resolve.
You might say to yourself, well it probably doesn't affect me or if so, it's only one or two. That's factually probably not true! A lot of times when parents have children who are trafficked, especially for sex trafficking, they start out trying to only tell those people who need to know. They fool themselves into thinking it is not as bad as it seems. They are in denial. I have seen this all too many times. Then when they have exhausted all reasonable efforts to find their child, they go through the dilemma of trying not to physically disrupt the child’s life by telling anyone else what is going on, since the parent expects the child will return soon.
This sequence of events could be outlined as follows.
Parents don’t want to destroy the social ties that their kid has, so it starts out with a few people knowing,
Then more people are put in the know as the parents get more frantic and do not know where to turn for help.
Parents seek help by talking to more people and looking for assistance from about anyone. This could be ongoing for some period of time.
Parents maintain a façade of normalcy throughout this ordeal still somewhat in denial.
The Parental Dilemma: Unable to determine how to find their child, how to get them away from traffickers, and how to not destroy their life and the family members’ lives.
Most parents have never gone through this before, so they do not know how to make informed decisions.
Imagine if you were in a position as an organization to prevent this from happening to your employees’ children. What if you could help parents make informed decisions before they get to this dramatic, scary, life and death situation? Wouldn't you be the hero? Wouldn't your employee be grateful and loyal to your company for your foresight and protection of their most valuable asset, their children? Equipping parents and grandparents with this knowledge would be innovative for employee development. Just a few side effects and an informed parent with information could be able to thwart the predator efforts to get their child.
The Protecting Our Communities Program – HR to the Rescue
That is possible with the Protecting Our Communities program. Our two-step approach to informing parents you could be the difference in saving an employee from resigning and/ or termination. Our program makes solid business sense. Businesses want employees to be able to show up to work focused on their job. They do not want employees who are so traumatized that they can’t do their job.
Parents prior to this era of time, did not have this problem. The smart phone was launched to the public in 2007. They cannot ask their parents how did you manage smartphones? How did you manage the fact that our children are connected to every predator in the world, all at once through the internet? How do you control the internet reaching our children? Our grandparents did not have that problem. That is why I include parents and grandparents in this book. It is a team effort, and the team needs to all be on the same page when it comes to facilitating the childhood of those that we are the stewards of their young lives.
You as a business organization are regularly doing employee development and improving the welfare of your overall business. The state of Texas did a study in 2012, that found 79,000 children are in human trafficking in Texas and 330,000 total adults and children are caught up in human trafficking. Those are just the ones we know about.
The Stats
In my experience over the past 20 years, if you have a group of one hundred people or more human trafficking is going to touch you. Your employees are your most valued asset to your business. To retrain a new staff member takes money and time. If you had to terminate one and you didn't really understand why, they were repeatedly on their phone did you lose your investment? Was that employee someone who is vital to your team? Do you have a policy or procedure for a parent with a missing child? If so great! If not, do you need one?
We deliver a one-hour workshop and distribute our booklet. It will guide them not just that day but something they can save and as their teen or adolescent or young adult starts to have problems, they can refer to it and make informed decisions before their child goes missing and before it destroys their life and your most valuable assets, your employee.
Won’t you join us in shutting down this most heinous of crimes – human trafficking!
I can help you bring this out to my community. What’s the best way to promote?