January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month

For the fourth January in a row, ICSA is joining with TAT to observe National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. However, you don’t have to wait until January to support the anti-trafficking efforts of the trucking industry.  Before this year ends, make the decision to engage your company and your drivers in fighting human trafficking as part of their regular jobs. Join millions of others in becoming educated and equipped to fight this horrific human rights abuse. Contact info@tatnonprofit.org to ask for those free resources.

Human trafficking is happening all around us, hidden in plain sight. There are millions of transportation professionals in North America uniquely positioned to recognize and report it. Imagine if every one of them were trained to do so! TAT (formerly known as Truckers Against Trafficking) is on a mission to build a mobile army of everyday heroes to do just that!

Each January, ICSA recommends its members log on and take the online training to become TAT certified in spotting and reporting trafficking. Again this year, ICSA members who take and complete the training will be entered into a drawing for a $200 gift card. To take the training now, click here.

In early December, TAT’s training portal showed 1,968,427 individuals as TAT-Trained. The trucking industry accounted for 1,569,347 of those individuals, the bus industry for 180,122 and the energy industry for 48,282.

In 2009 when it began, TAT’s industry focus was over-the-road truck drivers and truck stop employees. Traffickers were known to target truck drivers and truck stops when selling their victims, because truck stops were easy venues to reach along major highways where large groups of men congregated; and men with transient careers, often away from home and family were vulnerable in the minds of traffickers and “might be looking for company.”

“We saw these truckers, their industry, truck stops and travel plazas from a different perspective,” explained Kylla Lanier, TAT co-founder, deputy director and senior director of External Affairs. “We believed that if trained to know what human trafficking was, how to recognize and report it, they could be everyday heroes and play a major role in helping to recover these victims and get perpetrators arrested. And that’s proved to be the case.”

It took TAT 11 years to register its first million TAT-Trained, but only four to register close to the second million. TAT’s training for 15 years -- whether for over-the-road, local, mover/in-home delivery, transit/motorcoach, school transportation, truck stop or energy drivers and employees -– is transforming a growing number of men and women into human trafficking disrupters who are saving lives, changing attitudes and influencing others in their industries to join the fight to end the crime of human trafficking.

Take the time to browse TAT’s free training library of resources – videos, wallet cards, visor cards, posters and more. TAT makes it easy for companies and agencies to implement anti-trafficking training within their existing infrastructures and, by doing so, equip their workforce to better recognize and respond to suspicions of trafficking or encounters with potential victims. TAT also has a free, user-friendly app for Apple and Android devices in English, Spanish and French full of information on how to recognize and report human trafficking.

Then, in January, join with millions across the United States who will be spreading awareness of human trafficking at work by promoting National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Here again, TAT has an abundance of resources for companies to use to create awareness, as well as action steps that are effective. Every person can make a difference in the fight to end this crime.