BridgeWorks
Today, July 30, is the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, designated by the United Nations to focus attention on one of the gravest human-rights abuses there is. Most of the response to trafficking rightly centers on rescue, safety, and the justice system. We want to speak to a piece that gets less attention but sits close to our mission: what comes after. For a survivor trying to rebuild, one of the most powerful protections against being pulled back into exploitation is a stable, dignified way to earn a living.
Why work is part of recovery
Trafficking, at its core, is about control — often economic control. Survivors are frequently left with the same vulnerabilities that made them targets in the first place: no income, gaps in their work history, little access to housing, and sometimes a criminal record acquired while they were being exploited. Freedom from a trafficker is not the end of the danger if a person has no independent way to support themselves. Economic self-sufficiency is what turns escape into a lasting exit.
That is the same principle that runs through everything we do, and it is why survivor employment belongs in the workforce-development conversation. A job that pays a living wage is not just income. It is stability, identity, a schedule, a community of coworkers, and — crucially — the independence that makes a person far harder to re-victimize.
The barriers are real, and they are addressable
The obstacles survivors face in the job market are steep but familiar to us, because they overlap with the barriers our participants navigate every day: résumé gaps that are hard to explain, records that trigger automatic rejections, and the trauma that makes a high-pressure hiring process feel impossible. These are exactly the barriers our fair-chance hiring approach is built to lower — for employers willing to look past a background check to the person in front of them, and to the value they bring.
The tools that work are the ones we already use: wraparound support that addresses housing, transportation, and trauma-informed care alongside the job itself, and employer partners educated to hire on potential. The data we shared during Second Chance Month makes the case plainly — people given a genuine opportunity to work show up, stay, and thrive. And as we saw in the stories of mothers rebuilding careers after reentry, the throughline is dignity: meeting people where they are and building a real path forward.
What this day asks of us
Awareness days can feel abstract, but this one has a concrete ask for anyone in the world of work. Employers can commit to fair-chance practices and to partnering with the survivor-services organizations that know how to support a successful placement. All of us can resist the instinct to reduce a person to the worst thing that happened to them.
Survivors do not need pity. They need what everyone rebuilding a life needs: a real shot at a good job, and the support to hold onto it. That is the work our support services exist to do, and today is a fitting day to recommit to it.
