BOZEMAN, MT (June 30, 2021). Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport announces its participation in a global research collaboration spearheaded by United Against Slavery to fight human trafficking via the 2021 National Outreach Survey for Transportation (NOST). Over 100 contributors including 59 oversight agencies from Canada, Brazil, the Netherlands, and the USA will analyze frontline data from the aviation, maritime, pipeline, railroad, roadway and public transit agencies in an effort to craft policies and solutions to disrupt this criminal activity and ultimately make it difficult, unattractive and unprofitable.
In 2020, United Against Slavery (UAS) became the first-ever recipient of the USDOT Combating Human Trafficking in Transportation Impact Award. Christi Wigle, Co-Founder and CEO stated, “The National Outreach Survey for Transportation project will launch July 5, 2021 and be open to our collaboration partners for sixty days. The survey tool is designed to collect frontline data on all types of human trafficking to inform research, programming, evaluation, and other functions of the counter-trafficking community. The aggregate findings and data analysis will be completed and disseminated by April 2022 and will guide the collaboration team in crafting global solutions that can help save lives. Our collaborative data collection efforts at United Against Slavery is to help victims be freed from enslavement and to empower survivors with the resources needed in their healing journeys.”
“This crime happens everywhere, even in Montana. As a growing airport, we want to be ahead of the issue,” Airport Director Brian Sprenger said. “We will encourage the more than 1,100 people that are employed here at the airport to help inform new legislative policies and future trainings on human trafficking by taking this survey.”
