Name: Joseph Zaraya

Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, International Workers Rights

Date of Fieldwork: February 10, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Meredith Dank

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

On Thursday, the 10th of February Our group was able to interview Meredith Dank, Meredith is a consultant in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Her areas of focus include human trafficking, Forced Labor, LGBTQ issues, and victimization. She has investigated and been in many studies overseen by the U.S department of Justice.

She has done studies in over 8 countries and has worked to identify challenges in the investigation and prosecution of state and local human trafficking cases. She has helped anti-trafficking programs in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and the Philippines. During this interview she told us about about researching forced labor in different countries and how the data and information gathered can be used to help the problem but won’t stop the specific instance of forced labor. She told us about how forced and child labor are used to fuel multi-billion dollar industries and the workers don’t really see any of those profits

This interview was really important because it gave us an view from a professional who has spent 16 years learning about Forced and Child Labor. When she told us about how many times she has seen forced labor affect communities.  Her experience’s were really interesting and helped us learn a lot about our topic.