Street Outreach

One of our outreach posters!

Part of my job is to do a lot of street outreach in Hollywood, focused on communities, businesses, and populations where human trafficking is or could be prevalent. There are two of us outreach workers, and the other one, Ruben, is based in downtown LA and focuses on labor trafficking. I focus on sex trafficking.

I collaborate with a group called NightLight (and actually, do check out their website, because their organization was founded in Thailand, and they employ women rescued from trafficking and prostitution to make jewelry, which is sold here through NightLight USA). They have been doing outreach in Hollywood for maybe a year. Spending several hours with Charity, the director, over the past couple days has been so helpful for me in figuring out strategies for outreach and education in Hollywood.

In Thai town there are massage parlors everywhere. Several to a block. Some are legit; most sell sex. As we walked tonight we talked about strategies and tactics; visiting nearby businesses to distribute literature and hang posters, contacting apartment managers and city employees in the area to hold trainings on what to look for. In one hotel on Hollywood Blvd, the woman at the desk said helplessly that she sees trafficking all the time. She sees floods of children, mostly boys in this particular place, brought in for the business, and has no idea what to do about it.

It's all new territory. People are paving their own way in this fight against human trafficking, so it's no wonder I've felt a little clueless at times about how to approach my job. The more time I spend it in, out there, researching, talking, listening, the more ideas I have and different angles I see. I am hoping I can maximize my few months here, talk to as many people as possible. When people know what to look for, they start to spot it where they wouldn't have noticed before. If they know what to do next time, we've made progress.

Morale is up. That's a good thing. :)