Human Trafficking Blog Series: Avant Healthcare Professionals is Taking a Stand Against Modern Day Slavery

August 04, 2020

Human trafficking–or modern-day slavery–is a $150 billion industry, with over 20 million victims being trafficked at any given time. While it’s most known for sexual exploitation, human trafficking can also include forced labor, marriage, debt bondage, or organ removal. It’s also estimated that one in four victims of slavery are children. According to reports, Orlando lands number three on the list of highest-reported cases for human trafficking. As an Orlando-based company, Avant Healthcare Professionals takes an active role in ending human trafficking everywhere.

Last year, we began an initiative to raise awareness for our corporate staff on the horrors of human trafficking happening in our community. Members from our team met with Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to discuss the issue and how to spread the word to other businesses to help fight for the cause. Christine Commerce, the human trafficking task coordinator for Catholic Charities of Central Florida, was invited to host a lunch and learn at our offices to provide insight and resources to our staff on the topic.

To further drive the conversation at our company, we invited Tomas Lares, founder of United Abolitionists, to speak out our Avant quarterly staff meeting. The United Abolitionists is an organization dedicated to stopping all forms of human trafficking in the U.S. Lares spoke on what is happening in our “own backyards” and how human trafficking is making an impact on a global level.

We took our stance on human trafficking a step further by donating to the International Justice Mission (IJM), an organization committed to protecting people from modern slavery across the developing world. The IJM works with local officials, community partners, and advocates to rescue victims, bring criminals to justice, and strengthen justice systems. As an international staffing organization, we understand the importance of aiding parts of the world where slavery is rampant. Since the majority of our healthcare professionals are from the Philippines, we partnered with the Filipino chapter of the IJM to help solve human trafficking. 

At Avant Healthcare Professionals, we embody our mission of ‘changing lives,’ which includes fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. We will continue to push the conversation around human trafficking and work at the community level and global level to end this unspeakable crime. To learn the indicators of someone being trafficked, we encourage everyone to visit the National Human Trafficking Hotline website.