Twilio Teams Up With Nonprofits To Help Fight Human Trafficking

I love this. Long time ago, I tried to see if I could do a similar project but never got far. It was not for Human trafficking victims but was for the entire female population of South East Asia counties, esp. India where assaults on women and rapes are really common. I think a similar texting service can be setup for women in countries like India to call for help if possible or at least report it (maybe anonymously?). In a country where Police is basically useless, this will at least come in handy if there is enough data pouring in and maybe citizens can help each other by watching out for a particular place that is unsafe.

I'd really like to work for such a project.

This is good work - some trafficking victims cannot make phone calls and many REALLY do not want to engage authorities/the police.

I was close to an incident involving some J1s a few years ago. I'm not how this technology would have helped that particular situation, though Polaris Project did help. A big problem with NHTRC is that if you connect the victims with them, they ask MANY MANY MANY questions of the victim but legally cannot DO very much. It tires the victims out and roughs up already shaky trust.

So my question is: What happens if you text this number?

Also: How do victims of trafficking learn about this number?

Sweet! I'll pass this on to my friends at A 2nd Cup since they collaborate with other anti-human trafficking organizations in Houston.

facebook.com/a2ndcup

kudos to this shop. Neither my employer nor i are Twilio customers, but i do know then from two projects they have open soruced, which i regularly use--both of very high quality (Flask-RESTful & Localtunnel).

w/r/t the subject of this Post, this is a courageous thing to do--because awareness of this problem, particularly in the US, is not high, and certainly not as high as many other charitable causes (domestic violence, illiteracy, teenager drug use, etc.) In addition, because of the widely alleged and sometimes documented complicity of government officials et al. (see Huffington Post article on Moldova & H/T) this is not a unanimously supported cause like for instance the others i just mentioned.

but my god, the epic scale of this problem and the heart-breaking and prolonged suffering of its victims. About five or six years ago, I saw Lukas Moodysson's landmark film about human trafficking, "Lilya 4-ever"; some of the images from that film i'll never get out of my head.

Good on them. Love to see technology with positive applications.

Twilio = good people, good work. Good job!