Red Sand Project adds new sites to help draw awareness to human trafficking

Members of the Westmoreland County Human Trafficking Task Force are always seeking unique ways to draw attention to the issue they are battling, according to Lynn Mance of Delmont.

One of those ways is participating in the Red Sand Project, where volunteers like Mance fill the cracks in a public sidewalk with bright red sand, emblematic of the thousands of human trafficking victims who “fall through the cracks” in the social safety net.

Mance has been a volunteer with the Blackburn Center in Greensburg and worked on the Red Sand Project since it began five years ago.

“Something visual like this really draws your attention,” she said. “It lets us get information out there so people are aware of the signs of human trafficking.”

According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, Pennsylvania had 271 cases of human trafficking reported in 2019, the most recent available statistics. Each year, Mance said, participation in the Red Sand Project has grown.

“The first year, we just did the (Westmoreland) County Courthouse block,” she said. “And every year we keep adding places outside of Greensburg.”

They have included the New Kensington police station, Twin Lakes and St. Clair parks, Excela Westmoreland Hospital on Thursday and, on Sept. 7, the Delmont Public Library in Mance’s hometown.

“The library is brand new, it’s terrific, and most importantly, it gets a lot of foot traffic, so a lot of people will be able to see when we fill the cracks with this red sand,” she said.

This year, Red Sand volunteers also will work with a group of community partners, according to Shelbi, an outreach advocate and counselor at Blackburn, who asked that her last name not be used, as she works with domestic abuse victims both in and out of the court system.

“While some of our partners aren’t placing sand themselves, they’ll have shadow boxes about the project and information available throughout the month of September,” she said. “We’ll have a display at Seton Hill University as well, and we’ll be part of a talk there on Sept. 22 during their Criminal Justice Week, focusing on human trafficking.”

Project volunteers are encouraging the public to photograph themselves at one of the Red Sand installations with the hashtag #RedSandProjectGbg to help draw additional attention to the issue.

“A lot of people think human trafficking only affects people in poorer countries or just outside the U.S.,” Shelbi said. “I think we need to bring that awareness to our communities so it can be better addressed as a whole.”

For more, see RedSandProject.org and BlackburnCenter.org.