The Rotary Club of Lockport is proud to announce that we are proceeding on scheduling educational events across Western New York to combat human trafficking.
Many District 7090 Rotarians are aware of the approval, last Fall, by the Rotary Foundation of an anti-human trafficking global grant under the jurisdiction of the Rotary Club of Lockport but very much a collaborative effort of a steering committee from several district clubs. Many months were spent building knowledge on the subject and the required community assessment as well as connecting with two organizations based in Buffalo that will be doing training.
The primary objective in fulfilling the grant is to empower more people and organizations to be alert for and aware of the signs of trafficking, labor and sex, and to have the resources to fight this type of slavery which is worldwide including our cross-border Rotary district in urban, suburban and rural communities.
While many of our Rotary club members will acknowledge that “It’s out there,” numbers of cases of human trafficking intervention have been shared by the Western District of the New York Human Trafficking Task Force (Now defunded by the US Justice Department), People Against Trafficking Humans of Western New York (pathofwny.org) and Project Mona’s House (projectmonashouse.com). The latter two organizations will be dividing training at 4 or more locations. In addition to Batavia, still unscheduled trainings will be set in the Lockport area, Hilbert College for Southtowns and one in the Southern Tier. Hilbert College’s criminal justice program staff are designing tools to test the learning by attendees of the training in each location. Event registration for the free Saturday morning training in the Batavia area will shortly be available on ClubRunner and for non-Rotarians, on Sign Up Genius.
15 District 7090 Rotary clubs, 2 Rotary districts and the Rotary Foundation have supplied funding for this global grant. The Rotary Club of Niagara-on-the-Lake is now the international sponsor. It is hoped that the project will be an inspiration to seek more projects in the district between our two countries.
Success in achieving the Human Trafficking grant’s goals will depend on promotion of participation by District 7090 Rotarians themselves and strengthening the steering committee’s outreach to the widespread target audience: community service groups, educational professionals, healthcare providers, law enforcement, first responders, religious organizations and most importantly, parent and family groups.
Questions and suggestions may be directed to Paul Lehman, Chair or other members of the steering committee: Paul Saskowski (Batavia Rotary), Dr. Tommy Gerbassi (Lewiston Rotary), Timothy Priano, Lezlie Murch (Niagara-on-the-Lake Rotary) and Dr. John Boronkay (Orchard Park Rotary but currently on medical leave).
Paul E. Lehman
Chair, Human Trafficking Global Grant Steering Committee
Rotary Club of Lockport
Phone: 716-984-5128