Brooklyn Family Court celebrates resilience of AAPI heritage with human trafficking lecture | amNewYork

A Celebration of Asian Resilience honored AAPI Heritage Month by highlighting joy and resilience while addressing human trafficking. Committee members aimed to focus on stories of resilience and resistance rather than only challenges. A human rights advocate and trafficking survivor called for the legal community to use culturally sensitive approaches and emphasized empowering survivors to live independently. She described the need for community commitment to support both adult and child victims with passion and compassion. A managing social worker introduced Womankind, a nonprofit serving Asian survivors of gender-based violence. The event emphasized starting from within, recognizing survivors’ inherent power to advocate, speak up, and help change conditions for future generations.

"Members of the committee said that they wanted to highlight the joy and resilience of the AAPI community without shying away from the somber issue of human trafficking. There's so much history to highlight every year in our program, but this year, instead of focusing on some of the challenges faced by our communities, we wanted to center the joyful stories of resilience and resistance that's shared by us, said co-chair of the Kings County AAPI committee, Vanessa Kong."

"Shandra Woworuntu, a human rights advocate and survivor of human trafficking, gave remarks calling for the legal community to take a culturally sensitive approach toward the issue of human trafficking. Woworuntu's focus as a survivor and mentor is to empower other survivors to live independently. Woworuntu was appointed the first member of the U.S. Advisory Council to the White House on Human Trafficking, founded the Mentari Human Trafficking Survivor Empowerment Program, and co-founded the Asian Network Against Violence."

"Because of what happened with me, I would like to stop it, but I cannot do this alone without any commitment from the community, from each of you. Whether this is adult or children victims, they need our hand. They need our passion and compassion, Woworuntu."

"Jennifer Le, a managing social worker, introduced the audience to their work at Womankind, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving Asian survivors of gender-based violence. To really highlight and champion Asian resiliency, we must start from within and to understand that even though survivors are going through a lot, there is an inherent power in them that allows them to advocate for themselves, speak up, and in turn change the world so that future generations would not have to go throu"

Read at www.amny.com