Students Tackle a Silent Epidemic

Students at International Air and Hospitality Academy are taking on an issue that no one wants to talk about. The Hotel, Restaurant and Event Management Students at International Air and Hospitality Academy (IAHA) will collaborate with National Women’s Coalition Against Violence & Exploitation (NWCAVE) as the students will take a lead role to plan and execute The 2nd Annual Dinner and Dreams, a fundraising event benefiting NWCAVE this summer.

Each class has the opportunity to choose a non-profit organization that will benefit from their class project. After selected organizations had the opportunity to present their programs to the students, the current group of students elected to work with NWCAVE and the efforts the organization does on human trafficking and missing children. “We believe this horrific issue is not talked about enough and needs to be addressed,” said Alix Child, one of the students from the class. “It was a little unsettling to learn that there is so much human trafficking activity in the Greater Portland and Vancouver areas and people don’t want to talk about it, they just want to lock it away,” said Child.

NWCAVE is a volunteer operated non-profit organization located in the Pacific Northwest. They inform, educate, and help prevent violence and exploitation against women and children nationally and internationally through their missing persons division and media council.

They focus programming on human trafficking, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual violence, stalking, bullying, hate crimes and all other forms of violence and exploitation against women and children. “We felt inspired by the way NWCAVE leads this conversation. Choosing them for our class project was a unanimous class decision,” said the students from IAHA.

The students will present the 2nd Annual Dinner & Dreams: a Starstruck Evening benefiting NWCAVE on Friday, July 11, 2014 beginning at the newly remodeled Artillery Barracks event hall on the Fort Vancouver Historic Reserve. Dinner will be catered by NW Culinary Institute and the event will be black-tie (optional).

“This event allows me to be creative, learn, and at the same time make a difference in our world,” said student Kate Shirley. “The group works effectively as a team, making decisions and taking action. The 2nd Annual Dinner and Dreams, themed by the class as a Starstruck Evening, will take a lot of dedication; the students say that they are up to the challenge. They want to break a record by raising more funds than any past class of the academy, but they also say that raising awareness is truly the important part of the event,” said Shirley. Tickets for this year’s Dinner & Dreams Gala are on sale now at http://dinneranddreams2014.eventbrite.com. The emcee for the gala will be Shauna Parsons, KPTV News Anchor at Fox 12 Oregon.

Contributed by National Women’s Coalition Against Violence & Exploitation.