The Rotary Club of Woodland Hills hosted its second annual community event bringing Awareness to the epidemic of Human Trafficking, with a focus on Cyber Safety and Children. There were presentations by Homeland Security, LAPD Trafficking Division, DCFS, Empowerment Expert, and a survivor advocate. Click on READ MORE for the rest of the story.
On April 5th the Rotary Club of Woodland Hills held a free event to educate our community on the heinous crime of human trafficking how to combat it. This is a global scourge, but most of us are not aware that more than 3,000 young children, aged 11-17, disappear every single year, just from California alone. Worldwide there are 21 million children living as slaves!
Many of them are lured away through the internet and social media, which was the focus of the club’s educational forum. They suffer the tortures of constant rape, drug addiction, brutal beatings, and live as slaves. Only 1% of them are ever recovered, leaving families destroyed and these young girls and boys living horrific lives of pain and suffering. Educating our communities about where danger lurks and how to keep our children safe was the focus of the Rotary Club’s event.
A Los Angeles based anti-human trafficking organization called Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking (C.A.S.T.) works diligently through legal, social, and advocacy services, to help rehabilitate survivors and raise awareness. At this event a check from The Rotary Club of Woodland Hills for $10,000 was presented to Kiran Gupta, C.A.S.T. Associate Director of Strategic Funding and Communications.