The event is being promoted by the International Justice Mission (IJM) chapter at UT, a student group that, according to its pamphlet, “fights against injustice and oppression.”

As a part of No Slave November, IJM UT is promoting TraffickCam, an app that helps combat sex trafficking. The app allows hotel guests to take photos of their room before altering it and then upload the photos with the hotel location as they check out.

The purpose of TraffickCam is to create a database of hotel room images that an investigator can efficiently search, in order to match a location to other images under investigation.

According to the TraffickCam website, human traffickers “regularly post photographs of their victims posed in hotel rooms for online advertisements.” When app users upload photos of hotel rooms, these photographs can be used to help find victims of human trafficking and as evidence against human traffickers.

IJM UT is promoting the app by challenging other SEC schools to see which has the most community members download it. “The University Community,” according to a flyer made by IJM UT, “can make a big difference because a lot of trafficking occurs around major sporting events.”

“We believe our No Slave November Volunteer Challenge can help students become a part of the solution,” Anita Voorhees, sophomore in English and president of IJM UT, said. “College students think they cannot really make a difference, but downloading this app could potentially make a real difference in someone’s life.”

The app was created in 2015 by the Exchange Initiative, a resource center that provides people with the information and connections they need to combat sex trafficking. According to the Exchange Initiative’s website, the app is “85 percent accurate in identifying the correct hotel in the top 20 matches, according to early testing,” and no personal information, other than the phone’s GPS location, is used.

“I think it’s really cool,” Sydney Smith, freshman in kinesiology, said. “Human trafficking is definitely something that’s really scary to me just because I didn’t really know much about it, and now it’s becoming a bigger thing.”

The goal of No Slave November and the TraffickCam app is to bring everyone into the fight against human trafficking.

“It starts with us. It starts with our generation taking a stand for justice and helping those who cannot help themselves,” Voorhees said.

To learn more about IJM UT, including meeting times, visit its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/ijmutk/ or search on Facebook for “International Justice Mission at UTK.”

The Daily Beacon © November 2016