Colors bloomed everywhere as intense hues of vibrant oranges, greens, reds, pinks, blues, purples and yellows made for a vivid and unforgettable night at the LAT Fun Run. Participants donned face paint designs made from glow paint, draped glow necklaces around their necks, waved glow sticks and even sported glow glasses on their faces.
The event took place at North Oak Park on Friday, March 21. Melissa Adcock, junior English education major and vice-president of the Lions Against Trafficking club said, “Funny story, we can’t call it the electric run anymore, copyright issues. It’s the LAT Fun Run. As for the idea for the “glow run”, we wanted to do a night run because the idea is to ‘shine a light’ on human trafficking so we wanted to do that in a really fun and cool way so we just ordered glow sticks and got glow stuff everywhere to kind make it fun and exciting but also to send a message that we’re shining a light on such a dark issue.” And a dark issue it is, according to traffickinghope.org, there are an estimated 100,000-300,000 child victims in the U.S. alone.
This Fun Run was the first annual run for the A21 campaign. At only 1 mile long, It was a success, with over 75 people attending to raise $2,000. The money will go to Louisiana Coalition Against Human Trafficking, who are building homes for under aged girls that have been victims of trafficking locally.
One runner, Jonathan Jee, a freshman Business administration and Accounting double major, is a part of the club, and he helped to set up and get sponsorships for the event. When asked how he felt after the run, he said “I feel rewarded, now that I’ve done it. The fruition of a lot of my work that I put into this. I’m glad it all worked out, because in all the meetings there was so much planning so many things that went wrong. Everything turned out pretty good.”
He goes on to elaborate on his personal reasons, “When I came to college, I know I wanted to be a part of a group. I chose LAT primarily because. Throughout my high school years I just had experiences and knowledge of women who had been abused before and I was just really angry at that, I was really just I guess, traumatized, by it and I knew I wanted to be apart of that. The other groups, I felt, had enough people and support. We [LAT] had a good amount of support but we needed more, and I just had to be a part of that because it’s something that I’m passionate about.
Prizes were drawn and there was a paint fight at the end. Nora Saltalmachia, a freshman communications major, is not a part of the club but says that she definitely plans on joining. “It feels good,” said Saltalmachia. “It’s nice to know I’m supporting an amazing cause. I have a heart for it obviously.”
For more information about Lions Against Trafficking, please visit their website at www.lionsagainsttrafficking.org. The next LAT meeting is Wednesday, April 2nd in Fayard Hall room 225 at 5 p.m. If you know someone who is or may be a victim of human trafficking, please call Human Trafficking Resources center at 1-888-3737-888.