A young girl, 16 years old, wears the same clothes as anybody else. Her hair is pulled back and her sneakers are worn. However, instead of going home to do homework every night, she spends her nights being traded back and forth between strange men and places, another man selling her body for sex in exchange for money or drugs.

Human sex trafficking is the most common form of modern-day slavery, and while it happens around the world, it also is highly common in the United States, according to the FBI.

Reports from the FBI show that there are millions of women and children, both international and domestic, enslaved by the commercial sex industry. These victims make little, if any, money for what they go through.

Human sex trafficking is the fastest-growing business of organized crime and the third-largest criminal enterprise in the world, according to the FBI.

Local and national organizations are working to combat this issue, and members of the UNA community are getting involved, too.

Amanda Frazier, a junior, said she became aware of the issue after coming across the website for the organization Love 146.

“I didn’t really know what sex trafficking meant until I read the story on the site,” Frazier said. “It was about a little girl, and her number was 146. One line stood out in particular. It said, ‘There’s no light in her eyes, no life left.’

“It really bothered me. I wanted to do something to help.”

She said she started researching more and wanted to do something to help.

Around the same time, then UNA student Bethany Oliver was working to establish a chapter of Faceless, a group that also works to raise awareness about human sex trafficking, on UNA’s campus.

“I went to a weekend retreat in Nashville, and it just really opened my eyes to the fact that it exists in our own backyards,” Oliver said.

She said she realized how unaware people are of what’s going on.

“People don’t realize it could happen to anyone,” she said. “It could happen to your best friend. It only takes one person to be involved in something like that.”

Oliver said that as she established the group, she was glad to see so many people getting involved with the cause.

“Within the first semester of Faceless being on campus, there were two different cases in Florence,” Oliver said. “I think that really hit home for people and they began to realize that it could happen here.”

Frazier said she got involved with the group, as well as tried to raise awareness on her own.

“I gave a speech about it in one of my classes,” she said. “I also handed out fact cards to everyone.”

Oliver, who now serves as the coordinator of leadership and volunteerism in Student Engagement, said she is looking forward to following up on the group now that she is back at UNA.

“I definitely am going to look into it and see where it’s at,” she said. “I feel like people are more familiar with and aware of the issue now, whether that be good or bad.”