Human Trafficking Research Lab @Millikin

On January 18th 2022, I accompanied Dr. Laura Dean, Millikin students, and community members to the Decatur City Council meeting. The purpose of our visit to the city council was to read the Human Trafficking Awareness Month Declaration, I was lucky enough to be designated to read it for the whole council and broadcast live on public access television around the city. Since 2010, the President of the United States has dedicated the month of January as human trafficking awareness month. The month in geared towards general education events with the public on how to identify and help prevent these crimes both domestically and abroad.  Unfortunately, the population of Decatur has little knowledge on human trafficking so having the proclamation of Human Trafficking Awareness Month being read in the City Council is a great opportunity for city’s population to learn about this crime. This is because the city hall meetings are broadcasted on local TV public access channels which helps spread t

All of the details are set for our annual Human Trafficking Awareness Month talk. Every year we pick a different theme to cover regarding human trafficking and with the emphasis on education and training lately we thought this would be a good to discuss. This is the fifth year of our panel discussion and we are bringing in educators and trainers on human trafficking from Peoria, Bloomington, and Decatur. We will discuss prevailing pedagogies on human trafficking, challenges to teaching about this hidden crime and how to combat disinformation through educational opportunities. The panel discussion is sponsored by the Set Free Movement-Macon County and the Department History and Political Science at Millikin University. We are thankful for our wonderful advocates and educators in Central Illinois who take time out of their busy schedules to come and speak with Millikin students and the community. Panelists: Matthew Fuller Human Trafficking Training Specialist, Center for Prevention of Ab

Last semester I was enrolled in Dr. Dean’s Human Trafficking class, as well as working for the research lab. At the end of the semester, our final project was to make Millikin a slavery free campus as a class. This project was one I was very excited for since Dr. Dean told us about it in the beginning of the semester. To start the project, our class began to brainstorm about the different groups on our campus that may be unknowingly contributing to slavery. Once we had these groups, apparel, food service, human resources, and administration, we each signed up for the group that we wanted to investigate.  I signed up for the administration group, and we began to brainstorm who we should speak with on our campus. We used the University of Nottingham’s “The Slavery-Free Campus: A blueprint for university action against modern slavery” to begin our brainstorming. We decided that the most effective way to do this project would be to schedule interviews the head of Public Safety, the directo