Kate Case has spent the past three years advocating against human trafficking. Her goal? To eradicate slavery globally in her lifetime. It’s an ambitious pursuit, with an estimated 12 to 27 million people enslaved in sex or labor exploitation worldwide. But Case, a Global Studies major and 2013 graduate, is beginning to see results.
Last spring, she helped lobby the offices of 47 California state legislators for a Safe Harbor bill that would place human trafficking minors under juvenile court jurisdiction and into specialized programs rather than prosecuting them as criminals. The bill passed the state senate in May.
Case discovered her calling as a sophomore in a La Sierra class. In June 2011, she interned with the anti-human trafficking nonprofit California Against Slavery. During her junior year, she interned with the Seventh-day Adventist Church General Conference, where she introduced trafficking as an issue to tackle. While interning with the International Justice Mission (IJM) in Washington, D.C., she lobbied for the “End Trafficking in Government Contracting Act of 2012.” In January of her senior year she began a year-long fellowship with the IJM, responsible for graduate training.
Although she eventually plans to attend graduate school in public policy or public administration, she currently has important work to do in her new job as IJM’s Regional Advocacy Coordinator for the West Coast, covering 13 states.
