by Michael Lananna, University Communications
In late January, a group of delegates from North Africa gathered on the fifth floor of the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building for a presentation on UNC-Chapel Hill’s efforts to prevent human trafficking.
Representing the UNC School of Social Work, research professor Dean Duncan and senior research associate Nancy Hagan talked about their work on Project NO REST – a multiyear collaborative effort that had a profound impact on trafficking awareness and prevention across North Carolina.
The delegates listened intently through their earpieces to Arabic translators as Duncan and Hagan spoke, jotting down notes and ideas to take back to their countries. The group included prosecutors, political science researchers and activists from countries like Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait and more, who were invited to the United States through the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program.
The gathering underscored the scope of Project NO REST’s reach. Human trafficking is a global problem. And though Project NO REST focused exclusively on North Carolina, it created a collaborative framework and comprehensive strategy that could serve as a model for other parts of the world.
“Today was exciting because it brought home the tremendous work that we have done with Project NO REST,” Hagan said after the presentation. “We know that we set a foundation for a lot of the work that’s going on in the state, and I think we can be really proud of that, and it’s living. It’s ongoing.
“To see folks from other countries come in and have that kind of dialogue that we had today — ‘Well, this is happening in my country’ and ‘That’s happening in my country’ — it just builds the work.”
A statewide effort designed in partnership with the UNC School of Social Work, Project NO REST first received a $1.2 million grant from the Children’s Bureau in 2014 before getting an additional $5 million from the N.C. Governor’s Crime Commission. Funding for the project recently expired, though the work lives on.
NO REST, which stands for North Carolina Organizing and Responding to Exploitation and Sexual Trafficking of Children, took a holistic and multipronged approach. The project brought together a diverse group of 70 stakeholders – including the Schools of Government and the Hussman School of Journalism and Media — to address the trafficking of youths through age 25 in the state.
Human trafficking is defined as forcing, fooling or frightening someone into performing labor or sex acts for profit. Though often associated with sexual acts, trafficking can take many forms, including agricultural labor trafficking and illicit massage parlors.
Building awareness – and connecting survivors to resources – was a key pillar of the campaign, with NO REST developing PSAs that reached 96% of the state’s population. As Duncan, the project’s principal investigator, explained to the African delegates, many Americans have a warped view of what human trafficking is or don’t know the signs to spot it.
Working together across a variety of disciplines, the NO REST team developed a comprehensive, trauma-informed, survivor-centered plan and selected five communities (covering 17 counties) as pilot sites to implement it. In the first two years, those pilot sites served 532 people, and the ripples of NO REST’s work continue to connect survivors to resources across the state.
True to the NO REST name, the work to prevent trafficking is only just beginning.
“This is one of those projects that that you’ll just never get over,” Duncan said. “You recognize that you made an impact, and it was important and changed a lot of things in the state, and you still have this vision about the direction we need to go.”
Photo Courtesy University Communications
