Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking

We aim to conduct research that contributes data-driven insights to the anti-trafficking movement and advances a comprehensive response. We identify promising practices and areas for improvement from survivors, practitioners, and researchers, gathering insights that can foster partnerships and identify critical opportunities for the anti-trafficking movement.

We aim to equip human rights leaders and survivors with the knowledge, skills, and professional development opportunities necessary to elevate their voices within the anti-trafficking movement. We recognize that the lived experiences of survivor leaders position them as powerful change agents who can lead the field forward.

We aim to equip professional groups and diverse community audiences across Colorado with the knowledge to better understand, recognize, and react to instances of human trafficking. Through education that is survivor-informed, we believe that we can activate the community, creating more widespread support for the anti-trafficking movement. An informed and activated community is necessary for any comprehensive solution to meaningfully impact human exploitation.

We aim to host a hotline that increases access to services for individuals experiencing trafficking. For each person we are able to connect to a resource, we chip away at the trauma human exploitation causes. In developing, maintaining, and improving the resources available through the hotline, we also strengthen the network of community-based agencies across Colorado as they address human exploitation.

We are driven by a vision to end human trafficking, a severe form of exploitation. We hold the belief that social change - community-led, bottom-up solutions - is the pathway to eliminating human exploitation.

But what kind of social change would it really take to end human exploitation? While we know there is no single solution, we also recognize that nobody has the answer yet. LCHT employs the best possible methods that we know of right now to work towards eliminating human exploitation, and to continually ask - and answer - this question of ‘what would it really take.’ In other words, we are both working towards the solution and helping figure out what that means along the way; we drive social change through our programs, and simultaneously use our programs to better understand how to achieve the social conditions that would eliminate human exploitation. In this way we operate as a laboratory for collaboratively bringing ideas together to move towards solutions.

Human trafficking is a complex issue for which there is no single root cause. Complex issues require comprehensive solutions that mobilize a broad range of sectors and methods. LCHT believes those solutions lie in our communities, including formal and informal networks defined by geography, identity, and social connections.

In 2005, our organization formed as a state chapter of the Polaris Project, a nationally recognized organization. With the support of a small group of dedicated volunteers, we enhanced local anti­ trafficking efforts by raising public awareness and facilitating professional trainings. In 2009, in order to establish our work at the forefront of Colorado's anti-­trafficking movement, we transitioned to an independent 501(c)3 called the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking. We deliberately chose to describe ourselves as a laboratory to reflect our understanding of the need to incorporate a mix of ideas, with input from multiple sectors, to adequately understand and address the problem. Since our founding, we have built a strong network of partners, supporters, and leaders to amplify our capacity and impact. We are a recognized leader in anti-trafficking with established public support, an active Board of Directors, and a developed staff with the experience and skills to advance the mission.

Since 2005, LCHT has trained over 53,000 professionals and community members to recognize and appropriately intervene in human trafficking situations, we have conducted three major research projects to drive action and inform policy, we have assumed administration of Colorado's 24/7 human trafficking hotline / textline, and we have developed 200 future human rights leaders. For 15 years, LCHT has advanced a data-informed approach to anti-trafficking by completing major research projects that have provided valuable data regarding the problem of human trafficking in Colorado and beyond.