
Finance and management senior Jasmine Anglen presented her project All Walks, which raises awareness for sex trafficking in Phoenix, at the Clinton Global Initiative University in March 2014. Now, she is meeting with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
All Walks Project is an ASU student-led initiative that seeks to develop curriculum for rehabilitating sex trafficking survivors in Phoenix. The project also aims to educate ASU students and the community about the exploitation of women and children that takes place in Phoenix.
“Many people don’t know that sex trafficking is a problem right here in Phoenix,” Anglen said. “They think of it as something that happens abroad or in different nations, but it’s actually happening here. There’re people who’ve been trafficked that went to ASU or live in Phoenix now, so we’re hoping to increase awareness about this issues and help the survivors.”
Since CGIU, the team has developed curriculum for sex trafficking survivors rehabilitation programs, built networks inside and outside ASU, and reached out to domestic violence shelters to administer specialized rehabilitation programs for sex trafficking survivors.
The project received a lot of interest from other universities, including Harvard, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, who are looking to adopt the program.
“We are really hoping to make this program replicable,” Anglen said. “We want to be able to take it and basically start chapters at other universities, other major cities.”
The All Walks Project was one of five ASU projects chosen by the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative, which provides student ventures with funding, mentorship, space to work and technical support, to meet with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last Friday.
“They were really fascinated by the project,” she said. “I think that since the foundation is becoming more student-focused, they are really looking for solutions and innovative ideas on university campuses so I’m definitely hoping that the relationship continues to grow.”
Associate Dean of Student Entrepreneurship Garret Westlake said the Gates Foundation was visiting ASU to learn more about how to approach student entrepreneurs and start an ongoing conversation.
The All Walks Project also expanded to a club called AllWalks @ ASU that aims to educate students about domestic sex-trafficking through a large-scale awareness campaign. The club plans to bring diverse speakers, including survivors and experts on sex trafficking.

Today, there are 25 chapter members who contribute their knowledge and passion to draw attention to domestic sex-trafficking, but the club started with just Jessica Hocken and Erin Schulte, two best friends from high school, who answered Anglen's call for allies.
Schulte, justice studies sophomore and president of the AllWalks @ ASU club, said she had been looking for an organization that dealt with sex-trafficking awareness since the beginning of her freshman year.
She said when she attended the first meeting of the All Walks Project, she stayed silent and almost started tearing up because of the excessive excitement.
“I was delighted to find there was someone who was starting up the organization about the issue and I had an opportunity to have a leadership position,” Schulte said.
The team members developed a strong bond last March after working constantly for ten hours on the proposal for the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative. Anglen worked with several teams before, but this one developed a special connection, she said.
“The team is magically really cooperative,” she said.
Accountancy sophomore and a vice-president of the club Jessica Hocken said the strength of the club is not in numbers, but in the amount of passion the members bear.
“Although there’re 25 people in our chapter total, they are really passionate and fully committed to this cause,” Hocken said.
Although Arizona has the third-highest number of sex trafficking crimes committed in the U.S., people don’t realize it happens around them and don’t want to talk about it, Anglen said.
“It’s such an intense topic; it’s difficult to address,” Anglen said. “It’s a whole underground world here in Phoenix and … it’s very misunderstood.”
Creative writing graduate student Alexandra Comeaux has been working on a first-ever documentary about domestic sex-trafficking that takes place in “our own backyards” to destroy misconceptions about sex-trafficking, take down the attitude of stigma and public shame and educate women about the available resources.
By connecting with the All Walks Project, Comeaux said she hopes to reach out to the demographic of young men and women, because the change starts with this generation.
“With All Walks we are working to reset the college age group,” she said. “They are offering such an incredible program and once it gets up and running, they are going to spread like fire nationally. They have some incredibly powerful, empowered women at the helm of that group.”
Reach the reporter at kmaryaso@asu.edu or follow on Twitter @KseniaMaryasova
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