Hannah Odom is a sophomore majoring in accounting with a criminal justice minor from Greenville, South Carolina. But we chose her as this week’s Campus Celebrity for her current position as the co-president of the International Justice Mission (IJM) USC Chapter.
IJM is a faith-based, student-led human rights awareness organization that supports the International Justice Mission’s fight to end human trafficking. Hannah became interested in human abuse rights the summer after her senior year of high school when her church sponsored a class on human trafficking. The class focused on the trafficking of children and mentioned an organization that helped these victims, IJM. When Hannah came to USC that August, she saw the chapter at the organization fair and immediately joined.
“As a campus chapter, were underneath the national IJM but it’s kind of cool that we have the support from other campus chapters from all over the nation, as well as international,” said Hannah.
Hannah said the main goal of the organization is to raise awareness about this issue: “A lot of people are like, ‘slavery doesn’t exist anymore’ and we’re like, ‘you’re wrong!’
IJM meetings are also very interactive, Hannah adds. “If we have an event coming up, our meetings will be decorating posters. Last week we wrote letters to girls in Atlanta who are victims of the sex industry. The ‘Out of Darkness’ organization passes out the letters. Every Friday night they have princess nights and they hand out the letters with a rose. They’re just sweet letters that say ‘you’re beautiful’ and ‘you’re loved.’”
Ideally, Hannah hopes to start her own non-profit.
“Rather than going and giving rehab to victims of human trafficking, I want to reach out to pimps and say, ‘what you did was wrong and I hate it, but as much grace as there is for this girl, there is also that grace for you,’” she said.
“I think that’s a really cool turnaround story too, that I’ve seen in some documentaries. I think it’s cool when guys say ‘I used to traffic women and now I don’t and this is why…’ so that would be my dream job.”
If you’re interested in joining Hannah’s and IJM’s fight to end human trafficking, “like” them on Facebook here.