STREETS Project

Social Transformations to End Exploitation and Trafficking for Sex (STREETS) is contributing to the end of human trafficking through education and action research that is grounded in the perspectives and preferences of survivors. STREETS aims to impact communities locally and globally and become an effective voice inthe legal and policy realm. STREETS has been a part of 4W since its inception in 2015, and is supported by the Diermeier Foundation.

Our Project

Our goals to effect change and confront human trafficking are: 1) to develop educational content and training materials related to sex trafficking (grounded in research and survivor perspectives); 2) to become a research to practice bridge between the university and civil society actors working on these issues, including survivors themselves. We promote this work and amplify the efforts of others by: 3) making STREETS a network of global research and partnership opportunities. Finally, we support the researchers and practitioners of tomorrow by: 4) creating internships and mentoring related to anti-sex trafficking work for UW students.

Dr. Debbie Lassiter, CEO of Convergence-Milwaukee and Dr. Mark Lagon, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Combat Trafficking in Persons were STREETS-sponsored speakers at Vantage Point events in Madison.

Next Steps

• Organize a STREETS of Hope Forum in Madison (July 2018) around themes of victim identification, case management, and trafficking in the context of migration.

• Develop networks in Madison and globally toward the creation of a university and private sector coalition, Juvenile Life Information Exchange Network (JULIEnet), using open-source technology

to improve practice in the anti-trafficking and child protection sectors.

• Implement comparative cross-border research agenda in Texas and Spain and southern borders of Mexico/U.S. and Morocco/Spain.

• Support the work of the first state anti-trafficking regional hub in Outagamie County, WI through applied research and advice on standard-setting for survivor services

Activities and Impacts

Research, educational content, and training materials

• Worked with UW Continuing Education on modules for training professionals about sex trafficking and conducted training workshops at UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

• Produced a working paper on the outcomes and recommendations from the 2015 STREETS of Hope Forum, including recommendations for outcome measures for programming informed by survivor perspectives.

• Conducted online research on sexual exploitation in the classified advertising website, “Backpage” in Madison.

• Worked with the Spanish Anti-Trafficking Network and four Spanish universities, as well as civil society and university partners in Texas to create new courses and build capacity for a comparative cross-border research project supported by a European grant.

• Supported a qualitative, grounded-theory study with human trafficking survivors and educators on better practices on human trafficking education in U.S. schools.

Research-to-practice bridge and networks of global opportunities

• Expanded international partnerships in Spain (Spanish Anti-Human Trafficking Network); Japan (Lighthouse); Singapore (National University of Singapore); Cambodia (Hagar International); Romania (Fundatia Usa Deschisa-Bucharest); and Moldova.

• Supported local partnerships including the Wisconsin Anti-Human Trafficking Consortium and organized or participated in over 10 art exhibits and projects related to human trafficking in Madison and other Wisconsin cities; developed arts-based education/prevention program on representations of women.

• Deepened Project Respect partnership through healing arts-based survivor workshops and support for a survivor programs coordinator.

• Engaged with the UNESCO global platform through the UW UNESCO Chair on Gender, Wellbeing, and a Culture of Peace.

• Represented STREETS at 14 academic and policy forums, including a plenary at the 2017 4W Summit.

Education and mentoring for UW students

Watch this video made by UW-Madison student Nia Cayenne during her field course experience in Spain and Morocco during summer 2019. Under the leadership of Dr. Araceli Alonso, students learning innovative techniques used for identifying survivors of trafficking and helping with rehabilitation.

• Matched five student interns with local organizations and one with an organization in Spain; awarded funding to support Force for Freedom, a UW student-led organization; created a new undergraduate field course to educate UW students about the transnational challenges of human trafficking in Spain and the Mediterranean; and developed an independent study curriculum on trafficking challenges in SE Asia.

• Implemented three field courses in Spain; formalized curriculum on trafficking challenges in SE Asia; held multiple guest lectures in trafficking-related courses; continued work with five graduate and undergraduate assistants, providing networking, research, and professional development opportunities.