Human Trafficking and Sexual Slavery are a Billion Dollar Industry
Airline Ambassadors International (AAI)http://www.airlineamb.org in partnership with the International Tour Management Institute (ITMI)http://www.itmitourtraining.com/ has launched a series of educational programs that empower professional tour directors, tour guides and hospitality industry workers to recognize and prevent human trafficking.
“Human trafficking is the fastest growing business in the world and the most important human rights issue of our time. Every year millions of women and children are sold into slavery,” states Nancy Rivard, founder and president of AAI. “Airline Ambassadors experienced team has developed a unique curriculum, which gives travel and tourism professionals the skills to recognize and report human trafficking. This has already helped to save thousands of people from enslavement.”
“ITMI is working closely with AAI to provide professional tour directors, guides and tourism industry workers with this important skillset,” says Ted Bravos, CEO of ITMI. “Tourism industry workers are on the front lines, with proper instruction they can identify and help to stop human trafficking. ITMI is proud to offer this valuable education to tour directors, guides, bus drivers and other tourism industry workers.”
What is Human Trafficking:
Human Trafficking is a crime against humanity. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person through the use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them. Exploitation of others for profit includes:
- Forced labor
- Sex trafficking
- Debt bondage
- Child sex tourism
- Child pornography
- Involuntary domestic servitude
- Child marriage
- Child soldiers
- Infants for illegal adoption
- Harvesting of organs
- Organized begging rings
Inaugural Training in San Francisco:
The first formal human trafficking awareness training program for ITMI tour directors and guides and hospitality industry workers was conducted on Friday May 11th. In the future, every ITMI class will receive human trafficking awareness education. Every ITMI graduate will be soon be given online access to this curriculum, so that the thousands of ITMI tour directors around the world will be aware of the telltale signs of human exploitation and report it to the appropriate authorities.
