Local Nonprofit Hosting Walk To Raise Human Trafficking Awareness
By Cherri Gregg
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - A Philadelphia-based non-profit is hosting the city's first "Walk for Freedom" on Saturday.
This is part of a global effort in 200 cities to raise awareness about Human Trafficking.
"Nobody was born to be a prostitute," says Sharon Hackney-Robinson, a critical care nurse at Temple University.
She says her life changed the day she was pricked by a bloody needle while delivering the baby of a homeless mother. Tests showed the infant had HIV and it was later learned the mother was a victim of human trafficking.
"I'd never seen a woman that had been broken before," she says.
Robinson says she gave the woman her brand new handbag filled with lotions and toiletries. The woman cried. In 2013, Robinson founded the Hope Bag Mission, a non-profit that provides toiletry bags to groups that help human trafficking victims.
"Nobody deserves to be trafficked by a man who threatens to beat you unconscious if you don't bring him 10 bills by the end of the night or by someone who puts a gun to your child's head or threatens to rape your four-year-old," says Robinson, "we have to figure out what's going on with our girls and our young women. We have to help them."
Associate Director Kelli Caldwell works in the courts with diversionary programs that deal with women arrested for working in sex trades. She says in 98-percent of prostitution cases, the women are not performing the acts willfully.
"That's human trafficking," says Caldwell, "most people are not aware that human trafficking is happening here."
Caldwell join the Hope Bag Mission last year. She and Robinson are partnering with A21, a global anti-trafficking group, to organize Philadelphia's inaugural Freedom Walk.
"Education is key in learning what to do and how to deal with human trafficking," she says.
The walk kicks off at 10 a.m. at City Hall on Saturday. Details are available here.