Enslaved at 19

Zoe was a college freshman when she was approached by a well-dressed woman asking if she had ever considered modeling. It seemed legitimate – with professionals and what appeared to be a studio.

She posed for some pictures in sports apparel and afterwards the individuals asked her to fill out paperwork with her social security number, parents' names, home address and social media accounts – noting they wanted to be able to celebrate her if she was selected.

They paid her for the pictures and told her what a great model she was. Zoe felt valued.

The next photo shoot was far different. When she returned from preparing for the pictures, the well-dressed woman had been replaced by a two men. One of them sexually abused her and video-taped the act in order to blackmail and further exploit her. They now had photos and videos, and they threatened to share them on social media with everyone in her life.

Feeling embarrassed and isolated, and fearing for her life, she continued to do as instructed. Over the course of months, this escalated to her being forced into regular commercial sex trafficking.

Despite her attempts to maintain some degree of normalcy in her daily life, she was falling into a violent underworld.

Zoe was older than most victims of sex trafficking (the average age is 16¹), but her story exemplifies how trafficking can start and escalate, particularly in the era of social media, in unimaginable ways.

The earlier children and their caretakers are made aware of the dangers, the better we can shape an instinctive response to risks. Most organizations working to stop trafficking focus on addressing immediate concerns like prosecution, rescue and rehabilitation. And with so many victims of human trafficking (40 million worldwide, 10 million of whom are children²), this work is of vital importance.

But if we can educate people about what trafficking looks like and how it develops, maybe we can help more by preventing it from happening in the first place.

San Diego is one of the top 13 high-intensity child prostitution counties in the United States.³ Yet when in 2016 a client first approached Chris Marsh, UBS market head, explaining the issue, he was shocked. "I had no idea of the scope of what was going on in our backyards or how social media had changed the way predators were targeting victims and using various forms of leverage to draw them in," explained Chris. "This is truly a modern-day form of slavery."

Fast forward to December 2018 when, after numerous meetings with the District Attorney's Office, a public-private partnership called the San Diego Trafficking Prevention Collective was officially launched with the UBS-OF, UBS clients and leaders across the community.

The collective is comprised of three educational programs – PROTECT, kNOw MORE and Project ROOTS – delivered by nonprofit organizations including 3Strands Global Foundation, Point Loma Nazarene University, and Project Concern International (PCI).

Each focuses on educating children, their families and teachers about the risks of human trafficking. Through after-school mentoring, in-class school trainings and a rather unique approach of interactive drama workshops, the collective aims to reach 345,000 San Diego students.

With the investment of two dozen philanthropists, the UBS-OF, UBS colleagues and organizations like BlackRock, USD 3 million was raised to fund the collective's business plan, which will play out over the next three years.

The UBS-OF is co-investing 20 percent of each client's contribution as well as managing the engagement with detailed measurement and evaluation of impact metrics.