You wouldn't think that that trafficking is happening in Connecticut. We started this program 10 years ago. We're about to serve our thousandth kid. So in that small state of Connecticut we've served almost a thousand kids in 10 years. Right, extrapolate that to what must be happening in in California and Texas and some of the larger.
So really, if you think it must be happening in and some of the larger, so really, if you think it's not happening in your state, I promise you, unfortunately it is
At any given moment, an estimated 50 million people are being victimized in situations of trafficking and exploitation and, by the way, that includes forced marriages. But here's the scary part, my friends 25% of those are children. Can you imagine? I think about that. This is a topic I've been wanting to cover for quite some time and you know that could be happening in your own neighborhood and you don't even know about it. And this is something that I've been thinking about.
And with January being Human Traff trafficking month, I think it's a really important topic for us to address. So, as you know, on the show I have the experts that talk about the things that are difficult to hear, difficult conversations to have. That's what HIListically Speaking is all about. It is the traumas to the triumphs.
And listen, if this is a conversation you think is going to impact someone you know, send it on to someone, pass it along, pay it forward, leave a rating or review so that this episode reaches somebody's inbox and maybe makes a difference, because that's what we're all about. But, like I said, I have experts on the show that are doing these hard jobs, you know, really diving into it, and that person is Erin Williamson. She is the Chief Programs Strategy Officer at Love 146.
This is an organization dedicated to combating child trafficking and exploitation, including labor trafficking. If you didn't even know, that was a part of it. So, Erin, thank you so much for being here. I can't even imagine the work that you do and the things that you've seen over the years, but you're making such an impact, a profound impact, and I just want to say thank you for the work that you do. But thank you for joining us on HIListically Speaking.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.
You've been with Love 146 for a number of years, but I always love to give my guests a chance to share their own story of how you came into this work, because what makes you say you know? This is an area I want to focus on. You know when you can be doing anything. So can we go back a little bit to Erin's story?
Sure, absolutely. I first became kind of aware of even the fact that this existed when I was studying abroad in college. I was studying abroad in Kenya, and as part of my program you had to go off on your own for about a month and come back with a research paper kind of something you had done, and I was really taken by the number of children that were living on the street.
And I started working with those children and I started hearing, especially from the girls who were of pretty young age, that the way for them to stay safest was to either be a group of girls with an older male who basically sold them to have sex, or to be a single girl with a group of boys who kind of acted as a wife.
And that was the best way because unfortunately the police were even worse to them, and so the police would oftentimes sexually exploit them and then put them in jail where they were further exploited.
And then, you know, when I came back stateside, I started really diving into this issue and looking into something called child sex tourism, which is where people actually book trips internationally although it can be domestically as well for the sole purpose of having sex with children, and from there really became, you know, kept thinking, oh, this is something that happens over there.
I think that's where a lot of people start this happens in other countries and then really became aware of what was happening here in our own country, in the United States, and the prevalence of the issue here.
You know the one thing that that I was reading on Love 146 is that we think about victims of just being women and girls, and I read that the sex trafficking is not just isolated to women and girls, but it's also 15% of those in the US that are in survivor care which is something I definitely want to talk about have been boys, and those of the non-binary youth, and these are the kind of things I think we need to think about because it isn't just isolated.
So where are you seeing things going in that area too?
Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know I actually think the number is probably larger. I think that there's a lot of reasons why boys don't come forward, why nonbinary youth don't come forward. There's stigma. As a society, we tend to not believe that that can occur.
It's really important, for example in our prevention education, that when we're providing prevention, we do it with both boys and girls, so that not only can they help to protect themselves, but as they grow up and become mothers and fathers, they also know what to look for as they're raising their own children.
Because I do think that you know it's easy and I think it's more comfortable for all of us to think this could never happen to our child, but unfortunately, the reality is is that we are seeing that it's happening, and so we really do need to be looking out for all kids, not just girls, but also boys and non-binary youth.
You actually came up with the Survivor Care Program, right, you built this program. I want to talk about that because I think that's so important for people to know that that's a possibility. Can we go into that?
Yeah. So you know it's interesting, I was hired initially to build this program and a lot of Love 146's work had been overseas, had been working in Southeast Asia, and so you know they had this vision of what survivor care would look like that it would kind of be a residential facility and it would help, you know, kids who would come there and live there.
And actually what we decided to do was really recognize that there were way more kids than we could help through a residential program, and so we also wanted to help the parents.
Most of our kids when we come across them, yes, some of them are in the foster care system, Some of them have run away from home, but actually the large majority of them are still living with their families, many with their biological parents, some with kin, and we wanted to help foster their ability to care for these children, to understand what has happened to them, to support them as they address the trauma they've experienced, but also to realize that this doesn't define them, that doesn't
define them as a family, it doesn't define their children and what they're able to succeed in life. And so we really have created this program where we go out into the communities, we go into the youth's home.
We work with them, we work with their parents, their caregivers, other providers to really support everyone and provide this holistic care around this child, with our expertise understanding the trafficking victimization this child with our expertise understanding the trafficking, victimization, do you think that that is?
the most common misconception is that many of these kids might be homeless or in foster care and that it's not happening right under your own roof?
I do. I think it's really hard for people to understand, like I would know, if this was happening to my child. My child comes home every day and you know what I will say is that most of the parents when we, when we approach them, they had no idea that this was happening. Right, sometimes their children were appearing, you know, to be engaging in extra school activities, to be getting good grades they really there were no warning, warning signals that anything was wrong.
Other times the parents assumed oh, I thought they were maybe doing drugs, I knew something was happening, I thought they were in a bad relationship with a boyfriend. They knew something was wrong, but they never equated it to human trafficking. And so, again, you know, I think adolescence is a hard time in general, right, pre-adolescence and adolescence. It's hard.
And when you're going through this kind of level of exploitation where really what traffickers do is they spend a lot of time grooming and recruiting kids. And I think that's part of what's really important for parents and people to understand. It's not that, you know, it's not that these individuals just show up in their lives, right, they have spent a long time engaging with these kids before they exploit them, and so these kids aren't going to describe them as strangers.
They're going to describe them as my boyfriend or this couple that takes care of me when I need some extra support or when I'm getting in a fight with my parent or my landlord. We've seen all sorts of different individuals traffic children, and none of our kids describe them as strangers. Right, they've all formed some sort of relationship with these children.
I I have a feeling and I'm thinking of so many movies that have been done on this topic or it's been covered in some movie or film and it usually looks like some downtrodden person, uh, somebody in a low income area and and while there are other movies where it's covered it more affluent communities as well because it can't happen anywhere. Right, this can happen anywhere. Do you think that creates more of a misconception about things?
What we're seeing in the media and what we're seeing, you know, watching on TV.
Absolutely, I think that they're. The misconception is that this is equated with kidnapping. Right, that in order to be trafficked, you have to be kidnapped and taken somewhere. And the reality is is that most of our kids are still sleeping on their pillows at night. Right, they might run away for a period of time, but they do come back and sometimes they don't run away at all. Right, every night they're sleeping in their homes.
And you're right, the vulnerabilities are different for somebody who has more economic resources than someone who doesn't. But the thing is is that traffickers are going to figure out what that kid's vulnerability is and exploit that. So, yes, if it's that they need food or basic needs, the trafficker will promise to meet those needs.
But if their parents are working both working and not paying attention to that child and that child is really looking for parental figure, that trafficker will promise to provide that parental figure to them as well. So, really, they are looking, and sometimes even in the affluent communities and families, what we see is that that trafficker will get that child to do kind of one thing that steps over the line.
Right, send an explicit photo, engage in an explicit conversation, and then we'll kind of flip the script. What would your family say if I showed this to them? What would your community say if I sent this around your school? And that's how they manipulate them to get them to doing the next step in the next step, in the next step.
Yeah, there's a lot of manipulation I was gonna say maybe even some gaslighting in there, you know, and creating another parental figure that's letting them get away with things that maybe mom and dad wouldn't.
Yes, and also slowly pulling them away from their friends and from their parents and really encouraging the fighting. You don't need them, they don't, they don't respect you. You're more mature than other kids. Your age, you're different, right, and? And if we think about when we were adolescents, I mean I know I thought I was definitely more mature than all of my friends and you know, I for sure thought that I had it together.
And so if I had another adult telling me that and validating that, yes, I am special, I am different, I am more mature, it's that other people don't recognize me, but here this person is. And then all of a sudden, that person says well, if you want to still stay with me, if you want to have this relationship, here's what you're going to need to do. And at this point maybe I do have a bad relationship with my parents.
I have started fighting with them or I've ditched my friends and I don't have that, those close bonds and relationships. I am going to feel more compelled to go along because I don't want to lose that person who sees me for being special and says that they see who I am truly, where no one else does.
You know you mentioning that you're a mom yourself and everything you're sharing is making me think how does Erin do this when you have your own children at home? And it goes back to the topic that's so big right now a big buzzword of work-life balance. So I'm curious, as someone who does this work and has seen some of these atrocities, but then also, like I said, the traumas, but also the triumphs of how you've been able to protect so many children with Love 146.
I am really curious how does Erin protect herself and what do you do to make sure, as best, best as you can, that your little ones are protected?
Yeah, and that's a question that I could answer in so many different ways. I should also note that my husband has a job in which he also sees a lot of trauma. He is a pediatric neuro-oncologist and so we both kind of can bring our own lenses to raising our children, for better and for worse. One of the things we really try to do is be present when we're with our kids and not kind of, and we'll check each other, right, if we see each other kind of ruminating on their work or thinking.
But then there's also these moments that are really hard right. I remember when we brought a very young child into our safe home in the Philippines and that child was the same age as my child and I was changing their diaper and thinking how could somebody abuse a child, this small right? As I'm changing my own child's diaper, and you know that can be really hard right.
There are moments where you have to stop and you have to kind of force yourself to compartmentalize and be and re-engage in the present moment and take time for yourself. And then you also have to know when you're hitting that point of burnout, right, we all can't go a thousand miles an hour and you have to take that space and time.
And I will say at Love 146, one of the things I'm really grateful for is that every couple of years we offer paid sabbaticals, so month long paid sabbaticals, and I think that that's a really unique thing that we do as an organization, but it's also really recognizing the secondary trauma that does go along with this work.
It's amazing what you do. I'm taken back and I'm needing to take a breath every once in a while with what you're sharing, because it's just. It amazes me to be able to make a choice to go into this work, and I know from what you shared earlier and shared with those tuning in that there was a history that came into this from the work that you did when you were in school too, but just to continue doing this throughout the course of your entire career can really have an impact on you.
What do you think your biggest takeaway is from working with just in this area? Not maybe just not even just Love 146.
Yeah, you know, I think my biggest takeaway is, you know, a couple of things. One is at the worker level. So many of us are drawn to this work because we've had our own experience, right, we've had our own sexual victimization or sexual assault, and I think that, you know, oftentimes we are quick to say, oh, that doesn't define us right, like that doesn't define me. That is something that happened to me, it compels me to move forward, but it doesn't define me.
And I think that really embracing that this does not define these kids either has been just so important, I think, both for us and for our staff. We have kids that have experienced really horrific, horrific abuse and are now off in college right or now have received, you know, medical certificates and are raising their own families and have stable housing, and these are huge achievements that you know.
I think if you initially came across a child and you heard that they had been trafficked, you could have thought, oh my gosh, their life is over, they're going to be forever kind of tainted. And I think really, that the most important takeaway is, no, this is something yes, it was horrific and it happened to them, but it absolutely does not define who they are. It absolutely does not define what they are going to be able to accomplish in their life.
What it really does is it shows that we have to invest in these kids. We have to be there for them, we have to show up, we have to reemphasize to them that you have value. We see who you are because, again, a lot of times, the traffickers are saying sending messages of you'll always be dirty, no one will ever want you, you'll always be seen as an explicit you know, and they use a number of really inappropriate words.
And what we need to do, I think, as individuals in a society, is show up and say no, that's not, that's not how we see you.
Right, we see who you are as an individual, Helping them build the resiliency that has been taken from them. You know that actually I don't even want to say it's been taken from them. It's always there, there's always a possibility.
But encouraging them to see within themselves that what happened ED to you is not happening to you which is one thing I love to share when I'm working with folks is that this might be part of your story, but it could be someone else's survival guide and it could be your survival guide, absolutely Right. Which brings me to something that you have at Love 146, which is a really wonderful education program and you offer so many services.
And I do want to mention to those tuning in that if you are interested in supporting Love 146 or you have questions and you just want to have more knowledge, erin is actually sharing a parent tip email that you can sign up for, which is love146.org slash caregivers, and this is a freebie. I mean this is something that you can just download. If you go to the site, you might find other information you need or ways to get in touch or find different educational programs within Love 146.
So I'll put that all in the notes of this podcast episode so you can grab it at any time. But what other educational programs do you offer and have for those close to home, because you mentioned there are places all over the world, but now here in the US as well.
Yeah, so we have a prevention education program called Not a Number that's targeted towards middle and high school youth. We do it in, we train people up in schools and afterschool programs, residential facilities also, and really any place kids gather. We can train the individuals who are working in those places to implement this program and it's a five-module program. And then, you're right, we also try to put a lot of information on our website so that parents can download them.
The questions that we typically get are things like you know, when do I give my kid a phone? Right? How do I introduce my kid to the Internet? These are very, you know, common questions that we are trying to answer through that email series that you just mentioned, because it is, you know it is a hard conversation and I think there's an inclination to say my kid's never leaving my house, right, they're never going to a sleepover, they're never doing.
And I think you know, while I understand the desire and maybe the inclination to go there, you also want your child to know that generally, the world is a very safe place and you want them to go to explore and you want them to, you know, learn and figure out things and be as amazing and productive as they can be, and some of that means realizing that you know you can lay out the foundation and at some point you got to trust them and you got to trust the world.
And that can be scary for us as parents. I get that. I have my own child who just got his first phone right and doing that was a big deal and we were very intentional in how we did it. But at the end of the day I want him to be able to leave my house when he hits 18 and go off and live his own life and be successful in that, and that's really what we're trying to do when we're raising our children.
I think that touches in on the point of the evolving technology and living in this digital age where everything is right here at the access of your fingertips. I didn't have that growing up, you know, in my generation and Gen X, and before it was magazines and television, that's it. But it's like with kids today and look, we need to be in the digital age, we need to advance.
We can't rob them and they live in their room and they don't have anything, because we want them to be well-rounded as well. So I think that goes back to that idea. And you mentioned when to get the phone. What else can parents do if you can share just a couple of different ways that can to be mindful?
So, you know, I kind of equate it to teaching a kid how to cross the street. Right, when your kid is young, you're holding their hand and you're talking about looking both ways and you're being. You know you're not going to cross a highway with them on their first street, You're going to cross a smaller road that doesn't have a lot of cars, and that is kind of what it is like when you're introducing technology.
Right, you don't want to drop them off in the middle of New York City and say good luck, which unfortunately is when you, a parent, just hands over a phone, at whatever age, and says here's your phone and there's no conversation about it. There agent says here's your phone and there's no conversation about it, there's no safety software on it. That's a little bit of what you're doing, and so my, what we say is kind of keep it locked down initially and slowly give more and more access, right.
You, you want to help them, make sure that they're making right decisions when they're text messaging their friends before they're allowed to get on any kind of social media app. Right, and it's okay to say you know, we're going to have a really tight locked up agreement right, when you only have a certain amount of time on your phone or on your gaming system and as you get older that will. You'll get more and more freedom.
Right, it is much harder to give them the world and then, when something happens, take it away. Right, and we see that happening a lot with phones and with games. That's really really hard to do and almost every parent that has given them the world. It might not be trafficking, it might not be exploitation, but something has happened where that parent has gone. Now I have to take it away and that causes a lot of challenges.
A lot of tension too. And, by the way, when we're thinking about kids, I mean the brain isn't fully developed and I work with this all the time of social, emotional learning, putting it in the schools, the work that I do in Havening it's all about giving them tools to self-regulate and self-soothe, for self-care. And when we think about the fact that I mean I remember this being a kid If you're told to go to your room, think about what you did.
You rarely went to your room to think about what you did. You rarely went to a detention thinking about what you did. You were angry that you got caught, right.
Right.
So there's that level as well to think about that. What can we do to have these conversations with our, educate them as well, so that they're not like, oh well, you know. Or they think about it like, oh OK, I see where you're coming from, mom or dad. Yeah, I'm sorry, I mean, and not even apologizing, but I see where you're coming from. I know you want me to be safe rather than like you're punished for something you did Right.
Yeah, the other thing that we always talk about with parents is we say you know, adolescence is a normal time to push the limits, to break the rules. right, I mean, most of us did it when we were adolescents and we have to know our kids are going to do it. And so, yes, set your rules, be very clear with what your expectations are and then tell your kids look, I know that there are probably going to be times where you try to bend these rules.
I know that there might even be times when you break these rules, and what I want you to know is that in those moments, the most important thing is your safety. And so if you have broken a rule and you have ended up somewhere where you need help right Be it that you're, you know, out at a party and you need me to pick you up, or you're talking with someone online that seems uncomfortable, the most important thing in that moment is for you to come and talk with me. We will figure it out together.
So you have to kind of permission them to not permission them to break the rules, but acknowledge that they're likely going to break the rules, and permission them that, if and when that happens and they need your help, you set the expectation that you will be there, Because so many of our kids say I didn't tell anyone because I knew they'd be mad at me, because I wasn't supposed to X, Y and Z. Right, that's not what we want.
In those moments we're not worried about the X, Y and Z and the rules they broke. We're worried that someone they might now be in a dangerous situation, so we have to preemptively prepare them for that a dangerous situation, so we have to preemptively prepare them for that.
I think that goes back to what you were saying about creating a safe space. We want people to know that the space that is at home is the respite in the safest space it could possibly be, and that includes the conversations we have. Safe space can be out in your neighborhood, out in the world. You can create that, the car that you drive. We're always creating, creating safe spaces, but if the one place where you lay your head at night is not the safe space, we got a problem.
Right the conversations if they don't feel safe, we've got a problem. So that is such important information to have different kinds of conversations with our children, or even if it's not our own children.
I have children that are that either I work with or might be like a god child or somebody else's child, because that's another thing to think about that it might not be your own child, it could be your friend's child, or maybe your niece or your nephew, and they're telling you something that doesn't feel right, like it's really having your your antenna up to listen to what's being said and shared and the body language and everything that's being put out there. So these are such good tips.
I do want to remind folks that Love 146 is a nonprofit organization. This is an organization that Erin Williamson she's the chief program and strategy officer, and this is an organization dedicated to combating child trafficking and exploitation, including labor trafficking, which is a topic I definitely want us to chat about. What's considered labor trafficking? I mean, is it just sex trafficking?
No, no. So human trafficking does also include labor trafficking, and when there's labor trafficking you need to be able to prove force, fraud or coercion. And so you know that's really important. With sex trafficking, especially of children, it's just any kind of commercial sexual act, so any kind of time there's a sexual act for an exchange of anything of value. But with labor trafficking, because kids can legally work, you really do have to prove that force, fraud or coercion.
And so you know, I'll give you an example of sometimes what we've seen. We've seen magazine crews right, where kids are brought together and they're brought to a community and they, you know, get out of the car and they're told to go around to the houses and sell magazines and they're given quotas, right, that they need to sell a certain amount of magazines in order to kind of meet that quota.
And if they don't meet that quota, then there can be consequences, there can be beatings, there can be physical injury and that's what we call kind of that force, right. Sometimes, when we're talking about foreign nationals, right, people coming into the country, they'll say you know, look, we'll help you get you into the country smugglers sometimes and then they'll flip the script and they'll say actually, now what you need to do is pay us back even more than we told you.
And so we're going to have you work in. You know these shops, and usually it's long hours, it's minimal pay. You know these shops, and usually it's long hours, it's minimal pay. Most of that pay goes back to you know, paying whatever you needed to to cross the border, and then, of course, there's all sorts of fines oh, you needed to use the bathroom. Well, now we're going to deduct that from your pay. Oh, you need it.
And so they kind of can never get ahead in terms of paying down their debt, which really is not what they agreed to when they agreed to come into this country. And so, you know, we see it happening in different ways. Sometimes it's US citizens, sometimes it's foreign nationals. It really can be both, but you need to have that force broader coercion.
It's really important, as we raise our kids, to teach them what their legal rights are as they enter the workforce, because so many people just don't understand what their legal rights are. And so you even see kids, you know, working in restaurants where you know, hey, if you're carrying a plate of food and that food falls, what right does that restaurant have to take those that any kind of cost out of your paycheck, right?
You should know what your legal rights are in your workplace so that you're able to protect yourself, because sometimes employers even if it's not full blown trafficking do exploit children and their lack of knowledge regarding their rights. This is fascinating.
I never even thought about that, that. What you're sharing about the labor exploitation are things that never crossed my mind. And now my thought is going every time I see somebody outside that's doing the magazine thing, do you approach them and go? Are you safe? You know, like, what do you do in that situation? How do you know? Are there signs of a neighbor answering a door? When somebody is walking by doing that?
Are we going to constantly be on alert, thinking every kid that's coming to the door with a, with a pad and pencil or with a clipboard could be subjected to that? Or at a restaurant you?
know, Yep, and sometimes it's really hard to tell, right, Because sometimes, for example, at restaurants, you'll have people who are being exploited working right alongside people that are not being exploited and it's not always clear to tell. You know, I do think that, keeping your eyes and ears open, there is a human trafficking hotline which is 888-373-7888. You can always call them if you have concerns.
You know, typically when we would see magazine crews or we would see other you know them selling other things, there would be a group of kids that would then all get into a single car, Right, and that's how they got from one community to the next. That's very different than your. You know your neighborhood kid down the street who's selling pies to raise money for their.
You know their sports league, Right, you know that kid and fundraisers are a very common way in which kids, you know, raise money for the different activities that they're doing. But if these are kids that you don't recognize, if these are kids that are coming as a cohort in a vehicle being picked up, those are kind of red flags that you might want to think about.
And then maybe calling that hotline and letting them know. And it's not like you know we obviously don't. We don't want the neighborhood church group to get busted for something and the authorities are coming out, like we heard there's trafficking happening. But letting them know something's happening, they will do their job and take it to the next step. It doesn't hurt to make the call Right, right and they can also help advise you.
You know, hey, next time you might want to be, you might want to think about, you know, writing down the license plate number and just letting your local authorities know that you've seen this van now in your neighborhood a couple of times.
They do tend to come at this hour that you're a little worried because they seem to be kids that either probably should be at school at this time or should be doing homework at this time, or the kids don't seem to be wearing the same clothes every time they're coming. You know there can be little indicators that again that this isn't a kid that's raising money for their local activity. This is a kid that's really being forced out to make a quote as they sell things, do you?
also as an organization, have volunteers with people that help or offer programs or, you know, do something within Love 146 that if they want to get involved, how can they go about doing that?
Yeah, one of the best ways to get involved is really to do that peer-to-peer education. So we really try to support people to sharing information with their community. So, whether it be you know their local church group or whether it be their local different areas in which people congregate, their local PTO, we do that. We don't have volunteers that work directly with the youth.
Really, everyone who works directly with the youth is typically a licensed social worker and in part, we do that because of just the severity of the trauma and the expertise and really wanting that continuity of service provision. We have a wide variety of people who support and follow us. A lot of our average donation is $25. And we really rely on the community coming together and both supporting our work but also sharing our message and sharing the message that this is happening.
Right, our survivor care program is in Connecticut. People think of Connecticut as a very affluent state. You wouldn't think that trafficking is happening in Connecticut. We started this program 10 years ago. We're about to serve our 1,000th kid. So in that small state of Connecticut we've served almost 1,000 kids in 10 years. Right, extrapolate that to what must be happening in California and Texas and some of the larger.
So, really, if you think it's not happening in your state, I promise you, unfortunately it is. But there's also things that we can do. Right, there are ways that we can educate our kids, there are ways that we can protect our kids, and I loved what you said about don't just think of your own kid, right, think of all the other children that you come in contact with in your life and how can you support them and make sure that you are a safe place for them.
Unfortunately, not every home is a safe place. Right, you might be that safe place for that kid because home might not be, and so it's really important that you tell all the kids in your kind of in your community that you are there if and when they need you.
Yeah, it could be as little as you have a child and they have a friend and that friend isn't safe. And that friend is like I want to come to this house because this house is a safe place. It's all about safety right, absolutely. Externally and mentally. It is all about safety. So, listen, I want to remind folks.
I'm going to put all of the information that Erin has shared, graciously shared her time here on Holistically Speaking, but going to have all of that's going to be in the notes of this podcast, including the email program that you can download. That's the caregivers program. There'll be a link for that, this one eight eight number, now a hotline. If you anything doesn't seem right, call this hotline. That'll be in there as well.
And then, just finding out more about the peer education program and anything that you are thinking I can become more educated on this. It could be one small tip you learn just from listening or tuning into this podcast today that alerts you to make a difference. It only takes one starfish throwing back into the ocean to make a difference in the ecosystem, right? I always love to say that because it's so true.
We think we have to make monumental, huge changes, but a small change could change the life of one person. So, erin, I want to thank you so much for being here. I do love to do something with my guests before they go. I play a little game called rapid fire to get the neurons going, because, look, we have to have a little humor in the healing Right, and there's always, there's always some, there's always some good that comes out of it. So it's a way to end things on a good note.
I'm going to throw out a word that you might have mentioned, or you have mentioned during this podcast, or I have mentioned, and I want you to just come back with the first word that comes to mind. We'll do a little word association here on Hillel, simply Speaking. You ready, I'm ready? Okay, here we go. Survivor, child Advocacy, fighting Permission, space Labor.
Gosh a word. I know that's not a, but yeah, yeah, that is a good word.
That is a good word. Victim Survivor Technology.
Just amazing opportunity, yeah, trafficking.
My life's work. Safe, safe, home. Yeah, I was going to say safe and then home, but you nailed it. But here's the last one, because I didn't even ask you where the name of the organization came from. But if I were to throw out the word love, what do you come back with? Humanity? Oh my gosh, I felt that Beautiful. Thank you so much. Tell me where Love 146 comes from. How did that name come about?
Yeah, so one of our founders were overseas again, had heard about this issue of trafficking, initially thought it was something that happened overseas. And they went undercover and came across kids that were being exploited, and each of the girls had a red dress and a number attached to them, and that was how you ordered them you were given a menu with their numbers, various acts and the cost, and there was one girl who had the number 146.
And she was staring through what was a one way mirror, but there was kind of this fight in her and um, and unfortunately that that brothel got tipped off. When law enforcement came in there, the girls were gone and so we don't know what happened with her. But, uh, they decided to name the organization after her both. Uh, to remember that you know, this is an. This is an issue that impacts individual children and we are here to fight for those individual children, and no child should be a number.
That is powerful, wow. Well, all we can do is send out the love and light and hope that she got out and an organization like Love 146 got into her hands at some point.
Absolutely.
Wow. Are there any final thoughts that you'd like to leave with those tuning into the show?
You know. The only thing I would add is that I know, you know, just statistically, there are probably many of you who might have experienced your own trauma and who are coming and have listened to this, and I think it's really important to remember that taking care of others also includes taking care of yourself, and it is never too late to seek additional help and services, even if you haven't done it before in your life.
If you're thinking about it now, it's never too late to figure out how to support yourself. And I don't even want to say heal yourself, because if you're moving forward, then you have figured out already a way to heal aspects of yourself. But we all need help.
We all need support and I just want to acknowledge that I think sometimes we talk about this as if it doesn't impact us, both because of our own personal histories and because of our work, and I just want to honor the fact that I'm sure there are people who impact us, both because of our own personal histories and because of our work, and just want to honor the fact that that I'm I'm sure there are people who are listening, who are coming to this podcast
and coming to this work having experienced their own trauma and and just you know. Thank you for continuing to lean in and support yourself and others.
Yeah, and thank you for the work you're doing. You're a gift and and I know that there are probably many people we don't necessarily hear the thank yous or the appreciation, but you're making a difference and I appreciate you, thank you. It is all about creating a safe place, isn't it? So here's what you can do. I want you to check out the notes of this podcast episode with Erin Williamson To learn more about Love 146, the things that you can do to make a difference are so easy.
That includes the tips and tools that Erin shared here during our conversation, the hotline she shared. So if you hear something or you feel something's not right, you can give that hotline a call. And that also includes the parent tip emails that Love 146 puts out. You can sign up for that too. And creating a safe place also includes being kind to your mind. I talk about the Hug it Out program all the time how to hug it out with yourself.
If you want to learn more about how you can bring Havening Techniques into your organization, into your business or even into your own home in your life, go to hillaryrusso dot com slash trainings for upcoming trainings on this neuroscience-based approach that can change your thoughts, your moods, your behaviors, your habits, rapidly and help you build resiliency, and also help you with your everyday upsets and even your deep-rooted traumas.
I'm here to support you and I'm happy to make that connection with you, so please reach out. You can also sign up for my Brain Candy newsletter. It is a great way to learn more about conversations like this the one we just had with Erin Williamson and just becoming more educated on your own well-being and, of course, those of others around you. You make a difference.
Just one thing could do that, HIListically Speaking, is edited by 2 Market Media with music by Lipbone Redding and, of course, supported by you Week after week. I know you're taking your time out of your schedule to be here to tune in and it does not go unnoticed and I appreciate that. And remember it only takes one act of kindness, one gesture, to create change, just from caring. Never underestimate your own power to create change and to pay it forward.
I love you, I believe in you and I'm sending hugs your way. Be well.