Introduction

This report was prepared by Chris Ash, an anti-trafficking professional in the southeastern United States whose work centers around empowering survivor leadership and public health approaches to violence prevention. Currently the Survivor Leadership Program Manager for the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, Chris’s work brings together graduate study in gender and postcolonialism, over a decade of direct service crisis response with survivors of sexual violence, experience as a community organizer, and work as a Centers for Disease Control-funded training and technical assistance provider for statewide sexual violence prevention programming. This report is part of the Modern Slavery Policy and Evidence Centre’s research on survivor engagement in international development programs and policies to address modern slavery and human trafficking. This research project was commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office to explore the benefits of different types and levels of survivor engagement in order to translate these into evidence-based recommendations for policymakers. This regional report offers a brief summary of guidance offered by anti-trafficking professionals and experts working in the United States anti-trafficking context. Themes that emerged include: storytelling and tokenism, the need for professional development and career mobility, existing problematic sector and organizational frameworks and norms, and a need to better manage sector-wide and cultural power dynamics. Participants also offered recommendations for evaluation of meaningful survivor engagement.

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