Monterey Institute students Shauna Kelly (MAIPS ’10) and Melissa Booth (MAIPS ’10) are co-winners of the 2010 Reverend Sloane Coffin Anti-Human Trafficking Essay Contest and will each receive a $750 prize contributed by Dr. Peter Grothe. The prizes are given in memory of Professor Bill Hillar’s daughter Sale, who was taken by human traffickers and killed as she tried to flee her captors in Southeast Asia.  Professor Hillar teaches a popular workshop on Human Trafficking at the Monterey Institute every year.

Shauna Kelly’s essay is titled “The Empowerment of Women is a Prerequisite for Mitigating Human Trafficking” and draws on her experience in Sierra Leone last January for Professor Puspha Iyer's J-term course Challenges to Peacebuilding.  Ms. Kelly has focused on the fight against human trafficking in her studies at the Monterey Institute, where she has written a number of reports on different aspects of this growing global problem.

Melissa Booth’s essay is titled "Out of the Darkness and Into the Light: Initiation into and Exploration of the Human Trafficking Movement."  She says she realized she wanted to be part of the anti-trafficking movement when she was participating in Professor Iyer’s class in Cambodia.