Vanderbilt UNICEF End Trafficking Week: Experts Panel Discussion

Human trafficking is a global issue, a truly “widespread -- and extremely profitable -- crime” (UNICEF USA). However, it is also an issue that many do not realize is taking place right here in the United States. Human trafficking has been reported in all fifty states – and Nashville is a hub for it. In order to foster better understanding of the issue of human trafficking, its pertinence locally and globally, and effective ways to combat it, the Vanderbilt University UNICEF Campus Initiative is excited to offer an experts panel event, bringing together various leaders in diverse fields specializing in understanding and combating human trafficking. This event will be held on Friday, February 2nd from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. in Alumni 201. We strongly encourage anyone interested to attend! GME credit pending. Our guests will include:

• Sheila McClain, a former trafficking victim (whose powerful story was even written about by Nicholas Kristof) who now works with anti-trafficking organizations to fight the very problem that once controlled her life. After recovering in Nashville at Magdalene House (run by Thistle Farms), she became an employee of Thistle Farms. Eventually, she took a job at End Slavery Tennessee before returning once again to work for Thistle Farms.
• Paul Lim, a professor at Vanderbilt's History Department and Divinity School who has extensively studied evangelical Christians' anti-trafficking efforts around the world.
• Holly Thompson, a graduate student at Vanderbilt who was chosen as one of the Human Trafficking Institute's inaugural class of Douglass Fellows.
• Katie Thompson (no relation to Holly Thompson), an assistant at Free for Life International, where she works with the CEO regularly in order to ensure that the organization is operating smoothly.