According to numbers provided by the United States Department of State – along with the International Labour Organization, the Walk Free Foundation and the International Organization for Migration – at any given time in 2021, approximately 27.6 million individuals were victims of human trafficking.
It was numbers like those that motivated Betty Braden Graham and six other professionals in the Hattiesburg area to establish Pinebelt Unseen – a fund at the Pinebelt Foundation – to help combat hum trafficking by bolstering research, advocating awareness and prevention, and aiding with victim support. The group is part of the Area Development Partnership’s 2023 Leadership Pinebelt Class, which see individuals split into different groups to implement service projects.
“My group sat down and kind of started talking about what we were passionate about, what we thought would be pertinent, and we landed on human trafficking,” Graham said. “Being right in the Hub City, where you’ve got all this access to highways to bring crime in and bring crime out, unfortunately we are prime for human trafficking.
“There have been a few initiatives lately at the state level and local level to try to address it, so we talked to people at those levels to ask what they were doing, what we could do to help and how we could plug in. We landed on creating a fund, Pinebelt Unseen, to help what they are already doing.”
The group consists of Graham, who works at PriorityOne Bank; Brooke Cruthirds from the USM Foundation; Chris Odom from Mississippi Power; Hunter White from the City of Hattiesburg; Marques Johnson from The First Bank; Shawn Harris from The First Bank; and Valerie Bridgeforth from William Carey University. They focus on the following measures:
- Research: According to Pinebelt Unseen, because of a general lack of knowledge, familial sex trafficking is one of the most under-reported and least understood crimes in the United States. By supporting the Familial Sex Trafficking Research Study conducted by the University of Southern Mississippi Center for Human Trafficking Research and Training, Pinebelt Unseen aims to shed light on that type of sex trafficking.
- The Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution Project: More commonly known as SOAP, this community program is designed to equip hotel staff in Hattiesburg with the knowledge and resources to identify and combat human trafficking. SOAP involves distributing specially-labeled bars of soaps and makeup wipes featuring the National Human Trafficking Hotline number to local hotels, motels and rest stops.
- Victim outreach and support: The Shafer Center at the University of Southern Mississippi, which was founded in 1983, provides a 24-hour support line and in-person emotional support to victims via local emergency rooms and law enforcement, immediately following a report. The staff is 100 percent funded for direct services to victims or primary prevention activities.
“With those initiatives, the most important thing is research, trying to determine what actually makes up human trafficking in the Pine Belt,” Graham said. “We know what it looks like on a global level – the movie “Sound of Freedom” has been a pretty hot topic, but that talks about global human trafficking, or the United States level, but not in Mississippi and specific to the Pine Belt.”
To spur along fundraising efforts, Glory Bound Gyro Co. hosted a fundraising event for Pinebelt Unseen July 10 at the restaurant on U.S. 49 in Hattiesburg.
“There was a huge turnout, and they were really generous to do that,” Graham said. “It went really well; it went great.
“We don’t have the dollar amount yet … but when we were there, from our point of view, there were lots of people.”
Pinebelt Unseen will continue with its fundraising efforts in the near future, with a goal of $25,000.
Donations can be made online by visiting www.tinyurl.com/pinebeltunseen, and more information can be found by emailing pinebeltunseen@gmail.com. Donations by check can be mailed to Pinebelt Foundation, 1501 Adeline Street, Hattiesburg MS, 39401.
All donations are tax deductible.
“It’s one of those things that’s not as fun – it’s hard to fundraise for something like this,” Graham said. “It’s really, really scary, and we need to know exactly what we’re dealing with here in the Pine Belt with trafficking.
“If we don’t know how to address it, we won’t get anywhere.”
