For Rob Adams, the scope of human trafficking struck him when he heard a victim share their story.
“When you hear the devastation this crime creates you can’t not want to help,” says Adams (MPI Kansas City Chapter), a member of MPI’s International Board of Directors (IBOD).
For Cindy Wallace (MPI Oregon Chapter), the awareness came after learning the daughter of a good friend and follow MPI member had been trafficked.
“Because this member felt safe sharing her daughter’s experience and she knew the importance of educating others, the Oregon Chapter responded by adding anti-human trafficking educational sessions to our yearly programs and by also dedicating content for Global Meetings Industry Day solely to anti-human trafficking,” she says.
MPI’s Anti-Human Trafficking Committee—with Adams as board liaison and Wallace as chair—has created a resource page to combat human trafficking called “Raise Awareness. End Human Trafficking.” This robust page was launched at the end of July on United Nations’ World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.
MPI Anti-Human Trafficking Resources: Raise Awareness. End Human Trafficking.
Wallace says the group committed to raising awareness within MPI chapters and their communities by creating an education-in-a-box that can be implemented with each chapter worldwide. The components will include a focus on identifying victims, and if a victim is identified, what should be done. Over the next year, the committee is encouraging each of MPI’s 70 worldwide chapters and clubs to host an education session. The committee is also planning engagement at MPI’s World Education Congress in Grapevine this November.
The committee vetted education and training resources, facts and information, guides, toolkits and calls to action for members and chapters to use. The resource page also includes member-submitted narratives and stories from The Meeting Professional, which reported extensively on human trafficking throughout every issue in 2018.
MPI, along with numerous other industry associations, has signed the Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism, which is the only voluntary set of business principles that companies and organizations in the travel, business travel and tour-ism industries can implement to pre-vent and eradicate the trafficking and exploitation of children.
MPI’s Washington State Chapter was the first chapter to sign the code.
Thank you to the committee for their work on this important issue. I encourage the MPI community to visit the resource page and commit to raising awareness and helping put an end to human trafficking.
Until next time…
Rich Luna
Editor in Chief
rluna@mpiweb.org
