BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — Worthy2 is working to reach and help vulnerable women through a new flier outreach initiative.
“Worthy2 is an advocacy organization for adult and minor females who have been exploited through commercial sex, or what most people refer to as sex trafficking,” said Worthy2 founder and CEO Kathryn Guthrie. “We have been doing this work here in this area and Montgomery with state and federal law enforcement, and we’re in our seventh year. We work with the victim survivors. We meet them through our own outreaches — we do online outreach, which is when we actually reach out to them via text on commercial sex ads. [Many people don’t realize that] 70% of human trafficking, of sex trafficking, is pretty much done through websites that advertise women and girls for sale, and so we might meet a victim survivor that way.”
To expand the reach of Worthy2, Guthrie said she is planning to work with local businesses, hotels and other venues to post informative fliers in the bathroom where women can see the Worthy2 hotline number. Guthrie explained, while many might have seen National Human Trafficking Hotline posters in bathrooms or hotels, when someone calls that number, the person on the other end is not referring the women in need to someone local.
“[When people call the national hotline] either they’re seeing something where they suspect that someone might be being held against their will, doing trafficking, being trafficked or someone sees it thinks, ‘oh my gosh, that’s me. That’s happening to me,’” she said. “They’re going to call that number, maybe get referred but, they’re not going to get immediate help. But we do have a hotline, and once we put these posters out, we will monitor it 24/7. Right now, we call anybody back within 24 hours. We will put [the flyers] out and obviously we will ask permission, but we have our outreach group, and they will go out, and we’ll put them in the in the bathrooms in restaurants, on the back of the stall doors in hotels, in the lobbies, in the lobby bathrooms, gas stations and, if we can, we would get the flyers into some of the massage places.”
Guthrie said the fliers will include questions that could help people who are being trafficked realize the danger of their situation and reach out for help.
“They might not even realize that they’re being trafficked,” she said. “So something [that we would put on the flier] would be, ‘Are you being forced to work or to do something that you don’t want to do? Are you free to leave that situation? Is someone controlling your money, your identification or where you go? Do you feel safe?’ Those are four really powerful questions. If they are being trafficked, they are not free to leave, there’s control there and they are being forced to work.”
Guthrie said Worthy2 is also open to working with different businesses, including hotels, gas stations and other locations where trafficked women might be, to lead a training to help employees recognize the indicators of someone being trafficked.
“I think it’s important, because it is happening here, and this is what we’re about, being able to let these victim survivors know that there is help out there and that there’s a way to get out of it, instead of it being something where they just feel absolutely hopeless and that there’s no way out,” she said.
For more information, visit Worthy2 on Facebook or www.worthy2.org/. The Worthy2 helpline is (334) 352-8280.
