Campus Engagment 1

For my first campus engagement, I attended Corban Addison, A Walk Across the Sun: Abolishing Modern Slavery, which was held on November 1st. I was exposed to the lucrative business of human trafficking for the first time, when guest speaker Corban Addison, called to my attention how this form of slavery still exist in the world. I was astonished to learn that unfathomable form of slavery still exists around the world. Through exploitation of young girls in highly sophisticated, organized crime business of human trafficking is a worldwide problem. Corban brought to my understanding that, human trafficking victims are held against their will through acts of coercion and forced to work or provides services to the trafficker or others. The work or services may include anything from bonded or forced labor to commercialized sexual exploitation. The arrangement may be structured as a work contract, but with little to no payment or on terms which are highly exploitative. Sometimes the arrangement is structured as debt bondage, in which the victim is not being permitted or able to pay off the debt. What made this more interesting to me was the fact that the people who buy these young girls are upper-class American men. These criminals are making a business transaction with people who have corporate or executive jobs, not to mention men who have families. This just painted such a vivid picture in my mind of how serious a problem sex-trafficking is around the world. Corban Addison book, “A Walk Across the Sun,” is a narrative that entertains, but also calls attention to the problem of human trafficking. The events in the book begin with two young Indian girls being abducted into the sex trafficking business, and their fate is left at the hands of a lawyer. The lawyer then makes it his mission to rescue these girls from the ruthless criminals. Addison writes in a very understanding way for other women who have been victimized by human trafficking to understand that they are not alone. After listening to the Corban Addison, I found the similarities of his zeal embodies the lawyer that had to help the girls in “A Walk Across the Sun. Corban Addison has made it his mission not only to bring awareness to the problem, but to seek out a reasonable solution to end human sex-trafficking. He explained in his speech how there are two problems that surround human trafficking, which are that people must demand change to stop human trafficking and that this problem is not seen as a priority. People must realize that they themselves are the solution to stopping this world-wide problem. If we realize that we are the solution we will be more willing to demand change by speaking-up against it and talking to our government officials. Also once we demand change it will be seen as a priority that needs to be stopped. We also need to realize that the government has the money to stop this issue; they just don’t want to invest the money to do so. However, if we make our demands, this problem will be seen as a priority that needs to be stopped. Human trafficking is a lucrative business and the fastest growing criminal business in the world that needs to be put to an end. By the end of Corban’s speech, I realized that slavery does have human face, which is little girls around the world, who need us to help them fight the injustice they cannot.