Our Mission

The Issue

Human trafficking is a violation of a person’s basic human right to be free of slavery, and in the United States, the majority of immigrant human trafficking victims are from Asia and the Pacific Islands.[1] However, there is a critical gap in the outreach efforts to potential trafficking victims in Chicago’s Asian American communities. Although Chicago can boast a vibrant community of grassroots and community based organizations representing a wide spectrum of Asian Pacific Islander communities, to date there have been no targeted and coordinated outreach efforts to identify API trafficking victims in the Chicago metropolitan area.  Additionally, while agencies that serve human trafficking victims often receive large numbers of clients from Asia and the Pacific Islands, very few can claim linguistic or cultural competency in serving API clients.

---

[1] U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General’s Annual Report to Congress and Assessment of U.S. Government Activities to Combat Trafficking in Persons Fiscal Year 2010, page 30. 

Our Mission

Through the Asian American Trafficking Outreach Project (AATOP), the International Organization for Adolescents (IOFA) aims to fill the current gap in services and outreach for API victims of human trafficking by partnering with API-serving organizations to build their capacity to identify and serve victims of human trafficking within their communities.