SHARED HOPE INTERNATIONAL

Washington State Congresswoman Linda Smith traveled into the heart of the brothel district in Mumbai, India, in 1998. She witnessed brutal sexual slavery and exploitation of women and even young children who reminded her of her own granddaughters, a sight that both broke her heart and inspired her to action. While still in India, Linda launched Shared Hope International (SHI) and immediately began fundraising to help bring healing to devastated lives.

A strategic joint effort with an India-based NGO equipped a mobile van to provide nourishment and medical care on the streets of the brothel district and led to recovering and housing those desperate to escape. The extent of the need soon became clear, and Shared Hope’s first Village of Hope was established in a safe place far from Mumbai in 2001. Soon, a second Village of Hope was established in Nepal for the many Nepalese nationals who had been trafficked to Mumbai’s sex markets and yearned to return to their home country. In these two settings, the Women’s Investment Network (WIN) job readiness program was established to enable recovered women to acquire a skill to support themselves. First established at SHI headquarters to provide job training to exploited women in its own community WIN soon became a key component of all SHI international restoration efforts which included safe havens in Capetown, South Africa, Fiji and Jamaica.

With the dawning realization that sex trafficking was far more extensive than the places she first saw it, Linda Smith initiated the formation of the War Against Trafficking Alliance (WATA) in 2001, an effort to coordinate regional and international efforts to fight sex trafficking worldwide. WATA and the U.S. Department of State hosted the first World Summit, ‘Path Breaking Strategies in the Global Fight Against Sex Trafficking,’ convening activists from 114 countries to discuss practical solutions to the problems of sex tourism and trafficking in February 2003. Later that year, Shared Hope launched the award-winning ‘Esmerelda Campaign,’ a public awareness campaign against sex trafficking that aired throughout the Dominican Republic.

As a follow up to the World Summit, six international ‘Next Steps’ Conferences were held in Chisinau, Moldova,  Santo Domingo (2003), Johannesburg (2003), Mumbai (2003), Batam, Indonesia (2004), and Singapore (2005). These two-day conferences led to the passage of human trafficking laws and plans for enforcement in nations that were underachieving, as determined by the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report. Shared Hope then received a grant from the same to conduct field research on the business model fueling the sex industry; countries selected by SHI were Jamaica, the Netherlands, Japan, and the U.S. Notably, the U.S. itself had not been self-evaluated in previous TIP reports; adding examination of our country’s own record was eye-opening.

This 2007 report, entitled DEMAND., and the accompanying documentary, was the beginning of Shared Hope’s impressive record of research, training, and technical assistance. In the same timeframe, Shared Hope began working in partnership with human trafficking task forces in cities across the U.S. to provide this expertise. With funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, SHI conducted four years of research on the exploitation of American children through prostitution, pornography, or sexual performance, and coined the term, Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST) to underscore that these are our own citizens and legal permanent minors. In 2009 the findings of the National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: America’s Prostituted Children, along with DEMAND. were presented to Congress and entered into the Congressional Record. This research pioneered today’s movement against child sex slavery in America.

Perhaps Shared Hope is best known for driving needed legislation pertaining to the issue of DMST. In 2011 they began producing annual report cards to help states guide strategy to comprehensively combat DMST through identifying gaps in state law and providing a blueprint for legislative action. The report cards are not only an assessment of areas for improvement but solid guidelines for improved law and practice pertaining to survivors of sex trafficking. With a concentrated focus on the United States, Shared Hope began bringing together the stakeholders who would be the change agents to eradicate the sex trafficking of women and children. These gatherings evolved into the Juvenile Sex Trafficking (JuST) Conference, now known as the premier conference in the country on this topic.  With speakers, thought leaders, and individuals passionate about activism, including a significant representation by survivors, JuST events provide practical knowledge and actionable responses to raise awareness and ultimately end trafficking in local communities.

SHI also created educational resources in conjunction with their legislative work that provides a baseline understanding of domestic minor sex trafficking (DMST) to anti-trafficking task force members and first responders who work in the field. The 2013 release of CHOSEN was one of the first youth sex trafficking prevention resources available, designed to educate young people and circumvent tactics that predators use.. The next year, Gang TRAP was added to  CHOSEN, highlighting the dangers of gang involvement and its role in sex trafficking.

Today, SHI continues to lead prevention strategies, restoration programs, and justice initiatives to combat trafficking in the U.S. and abroad. Their JuST conference series will continue this year in Washington, D.C., featuring today’s most pressing issues in the anti-trafficking field. Presentations and workshops focus on skill-building, survivor experiences, cross-discipline collaboration, task force development, case studies, and lessons learned. The JuST Conference continues to stand by the motto that each person has a role to play in preventing and ending commercial sexual exploitation and that a collaborative community response is critical.