Unverified non-profit organisation

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Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) is a Los Angeles-based anti-human trafficking organization which helps rehabilitate survivors of human trafficking, raises awareness, and affects legislation and public policy surrounding human trafficking through legal, social, and advocacy services.

CAST partners with NGOs and government agencies, locally and internationally, to build a powerful movement to end modern-day slavery. CAST defines human trafficking as “a modern day form of slavery,” in which victims are subjected to force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of forced labor or sexual exploitation. Victims of trafficking can work in domestic service, factories, farms, restaurants, construction sites, hotel housekeeping, servile marriage, forced prostitution, child prostitution and child pornography.

CAST was one of the first organizations in the United States of America to provide services to victims of trafficking. Indeed, CAST reaches out to communities where potential victims of trafficking may reside, and offers training on identifying potential trafficking victims in order to help them.

CAST was founded in 1998 as a response to the landmark El Monte sweatshop case of 1995, in which 72 Thai immigrants were forced to work in slave-like conditions for 18-hours a day, while locked up in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte. The victims were paid about 69 cents an hour, and charged exorbitant amounts for basic necessities, ensuring they would never be able to pay off their original debt to their traffickers, and remain under their control. The case garnered national press coverage, and brought the issue of modern slavery and human trafficking into the mainstream media.

In 1997, Dr. Kathryn McMahon, a professor at California State University, Long Beach, started the Trafficked Women Project. This grew into CAST, which officially came into existence in 1998. Since then, CAST has become a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual human rights organization which has been internationally recognized for its dedication to the identification of trafficking survivors, the mobilization of communities to defend victims, and direct services for victims.

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