On the gloomy morning of Oct. 14, several hundred people gathered, clad in black with yellow bandanas, to raise awareness about human trafficking in Jack Purcell Park in downtown Ottawa.
The Walk for Freedom was organized by A21, an international organization founded by Christine Caine of Hillsong Church, Australia. The event had multiple sister walks happening all over the world, according to Michelle Morgan, one of the event organizers.
Morgan said A21 works to prevent trafficking, but also to rescue victims and set up safe homes in different countries around the world.
“They really work to rehabilitate survivors and integrate them back in their lives,” she said.
According to their website, A21’s main goal is to ultimately abolish all forms of slavery and to raise public awareness about human trafficking through campaigns. They also work directly with law enforcement to help identify victims and support victims after their rescue.
Morgan said the goal of hosting the walk was to raise awareness that trafficking is not something that just happens in other countries, but in Ottawa too.
“It’s really just to get people more aware and more involved and raise funds,” Morgan said.
Just after 11 a.m., the group assembled into a line and walked single file towards Parliament Hill, with yellow bandanas covering their mouths with the names of victims written on them.
Esther Sandalli, an attendee of the walk said “Unfortunately there are still a lot of people that are trafficked and they’re unseen, unheard of and nobody thinks it happens in Ottawa, but it does.”
This sentiment was shared by others attending the walk, including Emily Malice.
“A lot of people think it just happens in Greece and Turkey and those stories are horrific, but it also happens in our city. Like there was a girl who was taken from St. Laurent shopping mall,” she said.
When asked how they found out about the event, both Malice and Sandalli replied that they discovered the walk and subsequently A21 through their church.
There were several other organizations who were a part of the Walk for Freedom, including Persons Against the Crime of Trafficking in Humans (PACT).
PACT, a local organization founded in 2004, was created as an awareness group whose main goal is to bring awareness to the issue of human trafficking, according to Terrilee Kelford, chair of the organization.
“They did a study in 2014 and identified 140 victims in Ottawa of human trafficking. Ages range from 15 to 25,” Kelford said.
She also noted that almost all of the victims were being trafficked domestically and not internationally.
When asked how she got involved with PACT, Kelford said she started working with victims in the child welfare system and realized that many children were being recruited through the system.
Recently, three people were charged in Ottawa with human trafficking in two seperate cases that began in the summer, according to the Ottawa Citizen.
“Back then we called it prostitution or sex trade, and so now this use of the word trafficking has been a huge help because we need to identify that kids aren’t choosing to be involved in sex trade at 13 years old,” she said.
Photo by Jas Foong
