{"id":24255,"date":"2017-05-13T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-13T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=24255"},"modified":"2017-05-12T23:26:45","modified_gmt":"2017-05-13T04:26:45","slug":"austin-peay-sociologyjournalism-student-sarah-eskildson-to-help-combat-human-trafficking-with-summer-internship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2017\/05\/13\/austin-peay-sociologyjournalism-student-sarah-eskildson-to-help-combat-human-trafficking-with-summer-internship\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay sociology\/journalism student Sarah Eskildson to help combat human trafficking with summer internship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – An earthquake ravaged parts of Nepal on April 25th, 2015 destroying homes and businesses and killing nearly 9,000 people. In the months following the devastation, several mysterious individuals appeared in the ruble, offering survivors the opportunity to pursue a better life through education or jobs overseas.<\/p>\n

Thousands of women and girls, having no alternative, accepted these seemingly generous offers.<\/p>\n

\"APSU<\/a>

APSU Student Sara Eskildson. (Hunter Abrams, APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

According to a 2016 report by Public Radio International, many of those women and girls were then \u201csold into a global network that includes the dance bars of Kenya, the brothels and underground organ clinics of India, \u2018paper marriages\u2019 of South Korea and China, home-cleaning services in the Middle East, slave labor in South Asia and smuggling rings at the Mexico-US border.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year before the earthquake, in 2014, more than 13,000 Nepalese women and children were victims of human trafficking, and police in that country believe that number has increased by at least 15 percent since the earthquake.<\/p>\n

In 2006, Free For Life International, an anti-trafficking non-profit, was founded in Nashville, and this summer, Austin Peay State University student Sarah Eskildson will work to help Nepalese women and girls as part of her internship with the organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my passion, and I\u2019m excited to be just a little part of something so big,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

When Eskildson, a Clarksville native, first enrolled at APSU, she had difficultysettling on a major. Nothing seemed to fit her interest, but one afternoon, she happened to read an article on human trafficking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat caught my attention, so I started researching it more,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She read articles and books, traveled to Nashville to volunteer with groups such as End Slavery Tennessee and organized public awareness campaigns. When it came time to pick a major, she decided to pursue areas that fit this new interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember taking the intro to sociology class and realizing this would impact my understanding,\u201d she said. \u201cI also love to write, so I decided to major in both sociology and journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Free for Life International, in collaboration with the Peace Rehabilitation Center, operates border monitoring stations along Nepal\u2019s borders with India and Tibet, and in 2015, the organization rescued 213 girls from slavery and counseled more than 1,700 Nepalese on the dangers of trafficking. This summer, Eskildson will use the skills she\u2019s acquired during her studies at APSU to assist these missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be writing a lot of survivor stories,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen they rescue a victim, I will write up a story to publish on the website and on social media. I\u2019m excited I\u2019ll be bringing awareness to this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eskildson will return to campus next fall, and she plans to graduate in December. When she leaves APSU, she hopes to find a job that expands upon her experiences as an intern.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter how much you\u2019re getting paid,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you love it, you\u2019re going to be happy. And this is my passion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – An earthquake ravaged parts of Nepal on April 25th, 2015 destroying homes and businesses and killing nearly 9,000 people. In the months following the devastation, several mysterious individuals appeared in the ruble, offering survivors the opportunity to pursue a better life through education or jobs overseas. Thousands of women and girls, having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,262,3672,825,16262,30332,30331,14286,21796,9004,30329,27705,30330,10213],"class_list":["post-24255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","tag-apsu","tag-austin-peay-state-university","tag-china","tag-clarksville-tn","tag-earthquake","tag-end-slavery-tennessee","tag-human-trafficking","tag-internship","tag-kenya-africa","tag-middle-east","tag-nepal","tag-sarah-eskildson","tag-slave-labor","tag-south-korea"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-6jd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24256,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24255\/revisions\/24256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}