This project is on human trafficking in the United States with a specific focus on the east coast. When faced with the idea of human trafficking, a majority of people most likely conjure up images of people being kidnapped and shipped to various third-world countries. It feels like a distant issue, one that will never affect them in their lifetime. This project is meant to bring awareness to the fact that it does, indeed, happen right here in our country, under our noses.
This project is meant for the general public. I want to provide a website where people are able to see the facts about human trafficking and just how prevalent of an issue it is, as well as show them what they can do to help combat it. My research questions, to be more specific, are what does human trafficking look like in our area, and what can we do to stop it?
I hope to create a site that includes data about the kind of people that are affected by human trafficking, because it really can be anyone. This would include statistics about the gender, age, nationality, and economic status of the individuals, to name a few categories. I also want to have an interactive heat map showing the amount of human trafficking cases that were reported in each state in 2018. I think it would be important for it to be interactive so people visiting my sight will be more engaged and get more from the information. Having a map of the US will also, I hope, hit a nerve with people when they realise that there are reports of human trafficking no matter where they are from. There will also be a page with either video or audio interviews, or both, with various people somehow involved with human trafficking. A given person might be a nurse at the hospital who teaches courses to other nurses on how to recognize signs of human trafficking in patients that come into the ER, or a volunteer with an organization that helps combat human trafficking, or possibly even a person who has experienced trafficking themselves. I believe these interviews will be very important because in a way it makes this information I am presenting “more real”. Seeing and listening to a person talk about something that is so delicate of a topic will help my audience to feel a connection to what I’m presenting them, rather that just be an observer viewing facts.