Once a month, we will find out a little more about each other by learning about some of the placements in the League. Thank you to Mary Keller Costa for sharing with us this month about Advocacy and Public Awareness Committee and what they do within the League and community.
The goal of the Advocacy and Public Awareness Committee (APA) is to identify issues we see facing our community. We then try to bring awareness to these issues bringing them to the attention of our members, the community, and our elected officials. This year our committee has specifically focused on the issues of human trafficking and food deserts. In the fall we hosted a forum on food deserts that included a tour of Reid Park Academy’s garden and then finished with a panel discussion at the Junior League. We had many community members attend this event. Attendees shared with us great feedback on community gardens and the issue of food deserts surrounding our area.
Recently in early January, our committee hosted an educational forum focused on human trafficking highlighting National Human Trafficking Awareness day.
The event was in collaboration with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – Homeland Security Investigations, Presbyterian Healthcare and Carolinas Healthcare Systems. The JLC had a packed house of attendees hearing from speakers on way to identify and advocate on human trafficking awareness in our community.
To finish up our placement year, we will host our annual Public Officials Breakfast in April. The goal of our breakfast is to share these issues of human trafficking and food deserts with our elected officials, but we also plan to share what the Junior League is doing in response to these issues. This has been a productive year for APA and we are excited to share what we have heard from the community on these issues with our elected officials. We look forward to continued progress on these issues next year as well.
