![\"\"](\"http:\/\/newsimg.furman.edu.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/04.13-notforsale1.jpg\" "\\"04.13")
<\/a><\/p>\nFurman\u2019s student-run Global Issues Forum (GIF) realizes the significance of this problem and has spent the last year raising awareness about this issue and others related to women and gender.<\/p>\n
GIF\u2019s most recent effort\u2014bringing a speaker from the awareness group Not for Sale to Furman last Tuesday\u2014was supported in part by Furman\u2019s young alumni as part of the Young Alumni Council\u2019s micro-philanthropy projects.<\/p>\n
Not For Sale seeks to \u201ccreate a world where no one is for sale,\u201d according to Ethan Batstone, director of engagements for Not For Sale.\u00a0 The group, he said, tries to stem the tide of human trafficking by creating \u201ctools that engage business, government, and grassroots in order to . . . grow social enterprises to benefit enslaved and vulnerable communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not For Sale\u2019s reach has extended into Uganda, South Africa, Romania, Thailand Cambodia, and Peru. \u00a0The group also operates country-specific campaigns, pushing for health care and education reform, as well as advocating for children. \u00a0Free to Work, the campaign\u2019s international labor rights board, scores and critiques companies on child labor usage and works to educate businesses on the consequences of using child labor.<\/p>\n
After learning about Not For Sale\u2019s initiatives as well as the issue of enslaved communities, Furman students and others heard from a panel of professors and experts who gave interpretations from both a local and international perspective.<\/p>\n
Veena Khandke, Asian Studies professor, and Julieta Barcaglioni-Heller, housing assistance program manager for Safe Harbor, a non-profit domestic violence prevention center in the Upstate, discussed the causes of human trafficking.<\/p>\n
Khandke said environmental sustainability, poverty, deprivation, and migration play a large role in the prevalence of forced labor. \u00a0There are, she said, many social factors involved in trafficking as well, including, culture, gender and ethnicity.<\/p>\n
\u201cDealing with these inequalities creates a sense of need and desperation that brings vulnerable people into the crosshairs of criminal networks . . . and trafficking,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Students also learned about this issue on a local level.\u00a0 Barcaglioni-Heller said she has seen three examples of human trafficking in Greenville since 2010. Most of these, she said, suffered from domestic violence and succumbed to the promises of a better life.<\/p>\n