CREATE, the Coalition for Research and Education against Trafficking and Exploitation, is hosting an event at the Alvin Sherman Library from April 21 to May 5. The event is an opportunity for students to learn about human trafficking and to support the victims.
The event is a photo exhibit that will feature anonymous pictures of what the victims felt like when asked questions about their healthcare while in CREATE.
“It is brave of these survivors that although they are remaining anonymous, they are telling their story in the way that respects their privacy but shares with other people how they go through an aspect of their healing,” said Briana Kent, co-founder of CREATE and assistant dean of Professional Development and Education.
Students can support the victims by donating or sending a legacy gift on the NSU web-site. All donations and gifts are used for the victim’s health care needs, like buying them glasses, contacts, dental care, etc.
“Any money we get through donations goes 100% to providing services,” said Sandrine Gaillard-Kenney, associate dean in the College of Health Care Sciences and co-founder of CREATE.
The idea to form CREATE started after Gaillard-Kenney and Kent attended an international symposium in 2010 on child sex trafficking at the Child Health Institute. During the symposium, there were many panelists, but none of them were in healthcare.
After attending the symposium, Gaillard-Kenney and Kent felt healthcare should be more involved in the issue of human trafficking. So they founded CREATE.
“As we walked back to our offices, we said to each other, ‘We need to do something about the problem of human trafficking,’” said Kent. “As women, as mothers, and as people, we were both changed after attending the symposium. We didn’t think we would be researching human trafficking for 12 years.”
This started a passion to help victims by educating others and researching more ways to assist victims and raise awareness.
“The first survivor we helped was in 2017. It was a 23 year old Ukrainian man,” said Kent. “When he was rescued, he had to leave everything behind, and we were called to provide him with vision services.”
CREATE received its first grant for a series of developments for the faculty of the Dr. Pallavi Patel College of Health Care Sciences, formerly known as the College of Allied Health and Nursing. There were four sessions that trained faculty on human trafficking. Part of the training was to increase awareness of the indicators of human trafficking. Another part of the training was how faculty would respond to victims of human trafficking in a clinical setting.
Kent and Gaillard-Kenney received a second grant to replicate the sessions they did with their faculty across other academic units.
“We have partnerships with the College of Dental Medicine, the College of Optometry and the College of Psychology. Thanks to our grant and the partnership with those colleges, we are able to provide services to human trafficking survivors free of charge,” said Gaillard-Kenney.
These services are free for the first year and help provide dental care, eye care and counseling for victims.
The founders noticed it was important for health care providers to be aware of this problem as the victims were denied these services when they were with their captors.
They said these services allow the victims to heal their physical body and their minds and empower them to see a change that can be a visual reminder of moving on from their traumatic experience.
“Being able to change if there has been trauma to their face by their trafficker, to be able to change how they look in the mirror and see themselves, it’s very, very powerful,” said Kent.
For the education branch, Kent and Gaillard-Kenney conducted assessments to understand whether the healthcare fields would be interested in educating students about assisting victims of human trafficking. They reviewed syllabi to identify the fields already involved in educating students about human trafficking. Before, there were only classes that mentioned human rights, but no mention of human trafficking. They then created a course to educate students about human trafficking for each college level.
Gaillard-Kenney said she teaches an undergraduate class every fall about global issues in human trafficking. The course is online, open to everyone and runs for eight weeks. Students read various materials regarding the topic, like a book written by a victim of trafficking.
“It’s a very sad topic; it was informative, interesting and appealing,” said Elisa Flanagan, senior health science major. “The professor was very laidback and was really good at explaining everything. She spent a lot of time making sure that everybody understood everything about human trafficking.”
The goal is to educate the next generation, so it can be aware of the issue and work to protect everyone from becoming potential victims.
“We need to keep bringing this, especially to your age group, because you are the ones that are targeted,” said Gaillard-Kenney, referring to college students.
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