Summar Ghias’ work seeks to find comprehensive, collaborative, and systemic solutions for survivors of human trafficking both here and across the world. As Director of our Freedom From Trafficking team, Summar serves the Chicagoland area by building capacity and collaborating with Heartland Alliance partners working to achieve equity and opportunity for all.
How does Heartland Alliance work to prevent and respond to human trafficking? Can you explain the services your program provides and why those particular services were chosen?
Our program supports immigrant survivors of human trafficking through comprehensive case management, housing and mental health services.
Our case management is provided to meet individual needs, which can vary greatly depending on the age, lived experience, and culture of the individual. But regardless of those unique factors, we know that housing is a continued need and that people felt they needed an outlet to process their trauma that went beyond the scope of traditional talk therapy. As a result, we built out our program to offer emergency and transitional housing and mental health services to focus on healing.
What are the challenges or barriers that keep victims/survivors from connecting with Heartland’s services?
Folks have to know that they have experienced a crime – and that this crime affords them access to certain benefits, including eligibility for programs like ours. They may not know that they have experienced trafficking. In a lot of ways, they may not have the language, literally or otherwise, to really describe their experiences in a way that would identify them as trafficking survivors and then be routed to our services.
We respond to those challenges through education – not only are we dedicated to engaging our partners and stakeholders to know about our services, but we also educate to help folks identify. Our goal is to be really strategic in this effort to reach those professionals already supporting core populations – so they can engage in both identification and response once they have the knowledge in hand of what to do next. And that means a routing to Heartland’s services.
Providing safety and health care are major factors in Heartland’s response to human trafficking. How do we build trust and relationships in order to ensure victims are not only able to heal but also thrive?
Trust is built through actions. We let our participants lead the conversation, identify their goals, build on their strengths. We treat survivors as the experts of their own lives, with the ability to make their own decisions. We don’t impose labels on participants, on their lives, or on their relationships. We use the terms they use to describe themselves and their relationships. We build trust through consistency, transparency, and actions, not just words. We don’t make promises we can’t keep. We try to level out power dynamics to avoid mimicking any of the power and control that was present in their trafficking experience. And we advocate on their behalf to ensure they are not having to retell their story over and over again within systems as we access the support they need.
How can our supporters take action to help prevent human trafficking?
We can and should be thinking about the ways in which labor is exploited. We can and should be thinking about how we minimize that exploitation through our living wages, in the protections we offer workers of all kinds, and in the ways in which we source and consume products and engage with hospitality and service industries. We also should be thinking critically about business practices, holding large companies accountable, and of course, looking to the root of the issue to support vulnerable populations who may find themselves in trafficking situations because of larger push and pull factors like violence, poverty, and marginalization.
