167 - A 3 Pointer to #SlamDemand - endinghumantrafficking.org

167 – A 3 Pointer to #SlamDemand

Dr. Sandra Morgan and Dave Stachowiak talk about a great way to promote human trafficking awareness during basketball’s March Madness. Join in on the #SlamDemand hashtag!

How to get 3 points for #SlamDemand

Post a #SlamDemand factoid on social media.
Put the National Human Trafficking Hotline number 1-888-373-7888 in your phone.
Download the Sweat and Toil app for iPhone or Android.

The #SlamDemand Toolkit

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Transcript

Dave: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 167, A Three-Pointer to #SlamDemand.

Production Credits: [00:00:08] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave: [00:00:28] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie: [00:00:34] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave: [00:00:36] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. And scoring a three-pointer now and then, right Sandie.

Sandie: [00:00:47] That’s right. You know of all of the sports, basketball was always a little more assessable for me as a very vertically challenged person. I know that sounds a little counterintuitive, but I was a good guard in middle school because people tripped over me.

Dave: [00:01:08] Used it to your advantage.

Sandie: [00:01:09] Yeah. There you go. And then people didn’t expect me to actually shoot, but I could do a decent layup. So, I like watching basketball, it moves fast, the games are always really energetic, and I just love basketball. So, when the anti-trafficking world started using sports as a platform for increasing awareness about human trafficking like Nicosia did #tackledemand during the Super Bowl. So, when a lot of people are focused on a sport, there’s a brand-new audience for us to start talking to about human trafficking. And we’ve got to spread and broaden our reach. And during baseball season Deidre Pujols launched #strikeoutslavery in 2016. So, this year at Vanguard University our Live to Free students, launched #slamdemand at a doubleheader, I don’t know if they say that in basketball, but two games in one night, and at our Vanguard gym. And it was so much fun. And our students were posting on social media. Our athletes were doing their best jump shots to slam dunk, and the focus was on all forms of human trafficking. So, I thought, let’s equip our community with the toolkit we put together for that event at Vanguard. March Madness is coming up. Do you know what that is?

Dave: [00:02:52] I do know what March Madness.

Sandie: [00:02:53] Well tell us about it.

Dave: [00:02:55] The NCAA tournament that happens every year for college basketball, it’s you know they get down to Sweet 16, and the Elite 8, and the Final Four, and eventually there’s a national championship. I don’t know what city it is in this year.

Sandie: [00:03:08] It’s in San Antonio this year.

Dave: [00:03:10] Oh good. So yeah, it’s quite the event and especially the couple days with the first and second rounds are going on, so many people across the country are watching it and tuning into it. So, it really seems like a logical place, Sandie, to come alongside and to raise awareness. And that actually brings up a point as we’re of course really big on prevention. And I know you say a lot about we need to move beyond just awareness but in this case a slightly different focus, right?

Sandie: [00:03:35] Yeah, I’m actually kind of adjusting my perceptions on this because sometimes awareness is prevention. It’s like if there has been a flood or something, they’ll put signs up, “water is contaminated, don’t drink from here.” Well, that’s preventing people from getting some really awful health issues. But in an area of fighting human trafficking where we haven’t really reached a population. Sports fans they are a cross-section of our community across our nation. And for these few days every year, everybody’s tuned in that is a fan of that particular sport. And so, we want that to happen during March Madness. And we want to equip you, as a sports fan, to spread this awareness to your community. And we looked at this a little bit from a basketball rules point of view. Like, when I was growing up, so this kind of tells you how old I am. You could only score two points with a basket.

Dave: [00:04:40] Really?

Sandie: [00:04:43] See Dave, for you what was the top score?

Dave: [00:04:46] Of my top score?

Sandie: [00:04:47] Yeah. Did you ever get a three-pointer?

Dave: [00:04:50] Oh, I’m sure I did when I was standing by myself after attempting it seven times at a gym. No one else around. But I don’t think ever in a basketball game.

Sandie: [00:04:58] Well I went online to look at how did that come into being, because I didn’t get to do that. And so, I found out that it’s kind of a very measured arc and it’s like 22 feet away from the basket, and so you get three points instead of only two because the level of expertise is higher. Right? So, my theory in using this model is that you, as a listener, will improve your expertise and improve your score on fighting human trafficking during March Madness by using our little tool kit as a way to just bring it up and increase people’s awareness and understanding of how they might be contributing to demand. And that is the key to reduce human trafficking, we have to reduce demand. And we’ve talked about that on this show so many times and it is an important aspect.

Dave: [00:06:02] So that’s what the three-pointers are. And you mentioned you didn’t get to do a three-pointer, why was that?

Sandie: [00:06:07] Because it didn’t exist when I was a student. We only had two points in 1979.

Dave: [00:06:17] I just assumed the three-point line was there all the time.

Sandie: [00:06:20] Well no, that’s because you’re really young. And there will be people who will not like all the fact that we’re doing this ageism thing here. So, I want to challenge our Ending Human Trafficking podcast audience to get three points for #slamdemand, and you can get that by posting #slamdemand factoids. We’re going to do a Q guide that will be just a question with an answer, and they’ll be short. You can do them if you’re having a March Madness TV viewing party. It would be my dream when you listen to this podcast if you know a sportscaster if you can get the Q guide on somebody’s desk to share during the games. That’s what we did during our game here at Vanguard. We just had in between when they were clearing the court, there was a break, and we just read a factoid and everybody could learn just a tiny bit, and then we went right back to the game. Not a big deal, but just a little bit. And the other way that you can score because you can get up to three points. One is posting #slamdemand. Another way is to put the 888-3737-888 Human Trafficking Hotline number in your phone. Dave, I think you’ve done that way back during another episode, so when you see someone who looks like they might be a trafficking victim, someone who doesn’t have control of their own documents, someone who looks afraid of the person they’re with, someone who is working and seems to be working all the time never has a day off. They might be a labor trafficking victim, someone who’s a young person boy or girl under the control of a much older adult. When you see those kinds of things you can call the 888-3737-888 National Human Trafficking Hotline, and they will ask you some questions to help them determine if this might actually be a case. And I want to point out here, last year there were almost 5,000 cases identified through that hotline across the U.S., but there were about 20,000 calls. So, I’m OK if I’m one of the three calls where it wasn’t trafficking because every call increases the odds that someone will be identified, someone will see them and understand what’s happening there. The only way you can do that when you’re out is if you already have that number on your phone. Because we know, we don’t memorize phone numbers anymore like we used to we just use speed dial. Right? So, there are two ways to get a point and I want everybody to get three points. Number one, post on social media #slamdemand. Number two, enter the human trafficking hotline number in your phone. And then the third is the most fun. I want you to download the Sweat and Toil app. It is so fun when you go shopping you can change what you buy, and reduce demand for products that are made with slave and child labor.

Dave: [00:09:52] Interesting. OK.

Sandie: [00:09:54] This was so an app that our government planned to when they were mandated to do a trafficking report, a labor report, through the Department of Labor. And it’s an app that you can download from Google So for Android or for iPhone, you just go to the App Store, it’s FREE. And when you download it, you have over a thousand pages of research that is regularly updated, so that you can make choices that reduce demand. If you’re with your kids and are grocery shopping, and you’re thinking about getting some bananas today. Well you open up your app and you look on there, and you can see on mine, and we’ll put a link to this for people who haven’t already downloaded it by listening right now because I know you’re all interactive and unless you’re driving you’re probably already downloading this. When you open up bananas it has a symbol that shows child labor, and bananas that are harvested by children, which means they’re not getting an education. It says those come from four countries Belize, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. So, if I’m in the produce section looking at bananas and I open this because I want to teach my kids to care about children in other countries. Then I’m going to look at the label and if it says Nicaragua, we’re not going to buy bananas today because we don’t want to reinforce demand for children doing labor on banana plantations so I can have cheap bananas.

Dave: [00:11:44] Interesting. I’ve remembered a few of them we’ve talked about over the years on the show, but I have found myself at the supermarket like when I’m picking up a package of blueberries, thinking like is this one of the countries or not?

Sandie: [00:11:55] On go and look on your app! You just download it.

Dave: [00:11:58] I just did, Argentina blueberries are the ones to watch out for. It’s one of the things I can never remember when I’m there. There are so many goods on here, wow.

Sandie: [00:12:07] Isn’t it fun?! And It’s a game. I talked to one mom when she learned about this when they went shopping she started teaching her child about human rights and human dignity by using this app. And when they saw that the bananas were from Nicaragua she said, “let’s get apples today from Washington,” which of course we all know, I can already hear some of the academics in my life saying, ” well not all apples in Washington are necessarily slave free,” because we do have labor trafficking right here in the U.S. So, it is a complicated issue but there is something we can do and knowledge and awareness is the beginning of that.

Dave: [00:12:48] Interesting. So, I can’t help but ask this question of say we are going shopping and we decide to do a good job of not making decisions to buy. So, for example, blueberries from Argentina. How does the store know? Like is it part of our responsibility to take the next step to of like you know the store notices the blueberries aren’t selling as well. Maybe we need to make them cheaper.

Sandie: [00:13:11] Now for those who want to go beyond getting three points for this, you can actually fill out the suggestion form at the beginning at the front of the store, or you go online if you live in California or that company operates in California, California’s Supply Chain Transparency Act of 2010 says they have to answer consumer questions about the products that they sell. Where did they come from, the Supply Chain Transparency Act? And they have to tell you. So, if they have a policy for a social corporate social responsibility that is and I had a company CEO tell me we have zero tolerance for slavery, but they didn’t actually check the supply chain for the cotton in the tote bags that they were selling. So, they have to do a better job. So, we don’t just reduce demand so that somehow that’ll translate to something in Argentina and blueberries. But so that the people who are making the decisions here for the products on our shelves are called to a higher level of responsibility.

Dave: [00:14:24] They’ve got everything on here too, fireworks, Christmas decorations, furniture. It’s really gold. It’s really amazing.

Sandie: [00:14:37] Now one of the things I eat a lot of is broccoli, and so now I’m going to be on the watch for children who are working in agriculture on broccoli in Guatemala. So, I’m not going to get broccoli from Guatemala.

Dave: [00:14:52] This is really powerful, Sandie, as a resource and it’s super easy to use. But yeah, truly incredible. So, the call to action, one of the ways to get three points is to download this app, tell your friend. So, you’re sitting there watching a commercial. I mean going back to March Madness, and they’re watching a commercial, hey you know to take this first action download this on your phone. Use it the next time you go to the store, and look it up when you’re on your shopping list. And then you’ve done something you’ve taken action right away to make a difference on demand. And we could all do something. So, you’re going to come to the endinghumantrafficking.org podcast number 167, and you’ll download your toolkit. And in your toolkit, you’re going to get an Ending Human Trafficking cue guide that will have those factoids that you can share with your friends, and make them see how smart you are and how socially aware you are. And then you can download a PDF to print your own #slamdemand stickers and you can print them at home. You just have to buy some sticker project paper and some brands it’s called 8.5 by 11-inch self-adhesive paper and you print it. And then you just cut out the circles, they’re basketballs. Or if you don’t want to do the printing at home, you can go and do it at your local office store like Staples, Office Depot, somebody like that. They have that paper there. So, download the trafficking cue guide, the PDF, and then the e-book. And the e-book is a Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking, the five things you know before you start fighting human trafficking. And not everybody’s going to be ready to jump in at that level. But if you got the three points: you did #slamdemand, you put the number on your phone, and you downloaded this Sweat and Toil guide. I think you’re going to be ready now to read the e-book.

Dave: [00:16:57] Oh indeed. And that was going to be one of my next questions. That is where did you get the factoids from to post with the hashtag?

Sandie: [00:17:03] We’ll have a bucket on our resource list.

Dave: [00:17:07] Alright. So endinghumantrafficking.org is where you go for our website, all of our resources, to get on our e-mail list and everything you’ve been hearing on the show all along. But for this upset specifically, go to endinghumantrafficking.org/167. That will get you access to the guide, the e-book, and all the other information on the three-pointers. And Sandie, we’re going to make a difference, and we’re going to have fun watching some good basketball while we’re doing it, right?

Sandie: [00:17:38] Absolutely. And sign on to tell us that you did one of those three things.

Dave: [00:17:45] And how to let us know, Sandie? Is it just downloading the guide?

Sandie: [00:17:51] No. Big shout out to Andrew, who takes care of us on this podcast. He’s putting a response button, right on top of endinghumantrafficking.org and you can click and say I downloaded the app, I put the phone number in, I posted on social media #slamdemand.

Dave: [00:18:13] Alright! So just go over at endinghumantrafficking.org for all of that, and that’ll get you started. So, enjoy some great basketball and it helps us to reduce demand as well. Sandie, always a blast and I’ll see you in two weeks. Have a great time watching the games.

Sandie: [00:18:28] I’m going to watch them, #slamdemand.

Dave: [00:18:31] Take care, everyone.