Volunteers wearing bright canary yellow T shirts with blue lettering “Unwrap the Truth” walked the perimeter of St. James Anglican Cathedral’s green lawns in Toronto on busy St James Street. Indeed, “unwrap the truth” about human trafficking in order to SPOT human trafficking and to STOP human trafficking.
The “GIFT BOX Project“ is a creative United Nations brain child which has been used at a variety of large sports events in a number of countries since 2012 to promote education about human trafficking. The organization Faith Alliance was instrumental in bringing it to Toronto for the Pan Am and Para Pan Games.
The acronym GIFT stands for Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking. The Box has been designed to reflect the reality of a trafficked person. Initially, one sees a much larger than usual “gift box”. It is attractively decorated in colourful paint and artificial bows. It invites, lures and entices one to become interested, to know more, to recognize the possible potential that exists within it. The words on the outside of the box are filled with tempting promises, “we can live happy ever after” … “earn easy money” … “support your family”. However, stepping inside the box, one immediately feels and senses the cold, the aloneness, the emptiness of no support and unfulfilled promises. There is nothing inside except the stark, blatant truth. Sad personal stories about human trafficking are emblazoned on its four walls. The cold hard facts, faced by so many persons who have been lured into human trafficking with false promises, are prominently displayed.
In so many ways, this truly is a “gift box” of information to all of us as we learn to SPOT human trafficking in order to STOP and AVOID the allurement of human trafficking. Let us just remember that human trafficking can happen in a wide range of industries including agriculture, construction, temporary foreign workers programs, domestic work, commercial sex work, hospitality and begging rings.
To SPOT human trafficking be alert and ask yourself:
- Does someone else have the person’s legal documents or ID?
- Does the person have little or no access to their earnings?
- Does the person lack self-esteem or seem anxious?
- Does the person have injuries that appear to be the result of the application of control measures or assault?
To learn more visit www.stopthetraffck.org/spot www.faithalliance.ca
Mabel St. Louis CSJ