Political science students help collect data for anti-human trafficking project
Logan Butts |
Every semester, students across campus engage in research of all kinds - scientific, historical, socio-economic, and more. This past year, Lipscomb Political Science students had the opportunity to conduct research for a project of great importance.
For the past few years, political science students have interned with Viable, a company based in Brentwood that specializes in economic development, particularly in African countries. Through Viable and its president Ben Turner, the department made a connection with Ashleigh Chapman, an international human rights lawyer who has founded a number of companies that fight human trafficking globally.
One of Chapman’s main endeavors is the Engage Together project, a comprehensive, community mapping project that helps to illuminate all programs and services that help combat human trafficking.
“If we're going to combat human trafficking and really get people out of being trafficked, what does that look like from start to finish? It goes all the way from - let's build awareness of the issue at the very beginning to once we have identified a victim, how does that victim settle safely? How do we restore them and reincorporate them into society? You have so much awareness, but if you don't have anywhere to house victims once they are rescued, then the whole system falls apart,” said Dr. Susan Haynes, an Associate Professor of Political Science.
Chapman identified what those next steps needed to be to ensure the safety of any victims in the system, and then created a survey to collect information on what was already being done.
This past fall, political science students Margaret Tant, David Iskander, Amy Bush, and Mackenzie McConnell were able to intern with Engage Together by helping collect data for the project’s dashboards. The dashboards are where Engage Together stores information through collaborative processes and technology to bridge knowledge gaps, informing an entire community with solutions to any problems that come up in the logistical work done to end human trafficking. The ultimate goal is to lessen human trafficking by increasing collaboration among community actors and organizations, while also showing state officials where funds can be spent most effectively toward a solution.
Under the supervision of Haynes and Chapman, the students worked on the anti-human trafficking efforts in middle Tennessee by reaching out to hundreds of organizations and businesses that worked with vulnerable populations. This included everything from local police departments to homeless shelters to hotels
“We sent lots of emails and made lots of phone calls to people seeking out this information,” Tant said. “Us four interns would meet at the office every couple weeks as a team and strategize our next steps in order to get the most information possible. We would delegate different organizations to each intern, and regularly update each other on our progress. We also had a huge document where we would input the data we collected.”
The students worked through three phases of the project, the last of which consisted of sending out the aforementioned surveys to collect more information from the organizations.
“Overall, this internship was a very informative, eye-opening, fun, and collaborative effort,” Tant said.
Following the work from the interns, Haynes’ Research Methods class then spent time
rendering the data from the surveys and transferring it to the interactive community dashboard that shows which needs are being served and by which organizations.
This spring, Chapman will be presenting the data collected to Tennessee leadership with the anticipation that it will be rolled out statewide next year. There are plans for a statewide survey and dashboard to be implemented based on the pilot dashboard for middle Tennessee with the research conducted by the Lipscomb students. And the hope is that Lipscomb students will once again be able to be involved in the collection of the data through internships and the research methods class.
“It's a wonderful thing to be a part of, and I'm really excited for the students,” Haynes said. “This is the power of data. It shows that research skills can make a difference.”
To learn more about combating human trafficking, visit learnwithjusticeu.com and engagetogether.com. For those in Tennessee that know of an individual or organization actively involved in combatting human trafficking, reach out to Dr. Haynes at susan.haynes [at] lipscomb.edu. This also goes for those out of state who may want to bring the project to their community.