Anti-Human Trafficking Advocates Honored for Efforts

A nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating world slavery, especially child sex slavery, has announced the winners of the second annual Norma Hotaling Anti-Trafficking Awards.

Founded in 2008, Global Centurion focuses on the demand side of the equation: the perpetrators, exploiters, buyers, end-users of human beings. Hotaling, who spent two decades working to abolish sex trafficking, founded The SAGE Project—or Standing Against Global Exploitation.

The awards, which were created to honor Hotaling’s work, commemorate the anniversary of her death on Dec. 17, 2008. Global Centurion offers three awards to pay tribute to her legacy and to recognize individuals carrying on her work.

For the 2011 awards, three $5,000 awards are made: an award recognizing a Survivor-Centered Services Provider; Innovative Demand Reduction; and the Josephine Butler Award for Abolitionist Policy Development.

Kathrin Hardy, founder and director of Freedom From Exploitation based in San Diego, is the recipient of this year’s Survivor-Centered Services Provider Award. The award is designed to honor “a person who demonstrates a commitment to providing survivor-centered services to sex trafficking victims here in the United States,” NormaHotaling.com explains.

Hardy’s ogranization provides peer support and group facilitation to women and girls at-risk or involved in prostitution, human trafficking and all forms of sexual exploitation. It has served over 1,5000 individuals since its inception in 2002.

Hardy, a survivor of prostitution, homelessness, and drug and alcohol addiction, has also served as a research specialist for The Child and Adolescent Services Research Center for more than 16 years. There she conducts interviews with individuals who have been exploited through the sex industry and works to empower and educate those affected that seek to leave the life of sexual exploitation.

The Innovative Demand Reduction Award is “awarded to a person who demonstrates innovative approaches to demand reduction, particularly working with men and boys to changes attitudes and behaviors,” the website says. This year’s recipient is Kaffie McCullough, program manager of the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children Program at the nonprofit organization Juvenile Justice Fund.

McCullough addresses key areas known to create vulnerability for the extreme abuse of child sex trafficking. She also serves as the campaign manager for A Future. Not a Past, which works to eradicate demand in Georgia through mobilizing supporters, supporting key legislative efforts and commissions groundbreaking research that drives strategies of prevention, intervention and education.

In addition, McCullough helped create a training program for law enforcement officials to aid in the increase of arrests and prosecutions of pimps and johns in Georgia, reaching 3,000 law enforcement officials in 51 counties.

Amanda Kloer was awarded the Josephine Butler Abolitionist Award for Policy Development, which is given to “a person who challenges the status quo and creates new abolitionist policy or approach to sex trafficking in the United States,” explains NormaHotaling.com.

Kloer, who launched the Human Trafficking Cause Community at Change.org, is their director of Organization for Human Trafficking. The online activist base has grown to nearly half a million activists engaged in anti-trafficking this year.

She has helped lead over 50 campaigns targeting governmental, corporate and institutional human trafficking policies from an abolitionist perspective.

Although it is difficult to predict the amount of sex trafficking victims, The Washington Times reports that analysts say between 100,000 and 300,000 children are sexually exploited or at the risk of being sexually exploited in the U.S. One expert estimates 1.6 million children younger than 18, native and foreign-born, have been victims of the country’s sex trade.

Applications for the 2012 Norma Hotaling Anti-Trafficking Awards are available at globalcenturion.org.