Description:
Drawing on four decades spent combating human trafficking, Lauran Bethell will explain factors and trends that make people vulnerable to exploitation. She will also present cases of successful remedies and preventive measures.
At its core, human trafficking is the exploitation of vulnerability. Many factors contribute to making someone or a group of people vulnerable. Some are economic, others cultural. Family and community can be factors. And the factors shift over time with new trends in migration and new communication technologies.
Lauran will break down these complexities so that participants can understand trafficking and find their own ways to help combat it.
Lauran Bethell has spent the last four decades deeply involved in the global effort to combat human trafficking. In 1987, she became the first Director of the New Life Center in Chiang Mai, offering young at-risk girls and women from minority groups a chance to escape from the commercial sex industry through education and vocational training. She helped rescue many young women who were trapped in brothels, and helped them heal their trauma. She relocated to Europe in 2001, and then to California in 2020, from where she continues to travel and consult.