Sharing invaluable insights, Dr. Doug Gilmer, an influential member of the Department of Homeland Security's Center for Countering Human Trafficking and mentor for the Frederick Douglass Human Trafficking Institute's Fellows Program, unveils the secrets of running effective and diverse coalitions in the fight against human trafficking. Prepare to be educated as he presents the enlightening findings of his dissertation on the results of multidisciplinary teams tackling this grave issue.
As we dig deeper, we uncover not only the surprising perspectives within these multi-disciplinary teams but also the central role trust and accountability play in their success. Imagine what can happen when victim service providers and law enforcement officers find common ground and shared purpose! Is it easy to stay in one's lane? Can trust be rebuilt once it's broken? Listen in as we explore these compelling questions.
Despite the challenges, Dr. Gilmore highlights the importance of shared goals and understanding each other's motivations. Packed with wisdom and invaluable lessons, this episode enlightens us on the power of collaborative coalitions.
Sharing invaluable insights, Dr. Doug Gilmer, an influential member of the Department of Homeland Security's Center for Countering Human Trafficking and mentor for the Frederick Douglass Human Trafficking Institute's Fellows Program, unveils the secrets of running effective and diverse coalitions in the fight against human trafficking. Prepare to be educated as he presents the enlightening findings of his dissertation on the results of multidisciplinary teams tackling this grave issue.
As we dig deeper, we uncover not only the surprising perspectives within these multi-disciplinary teams but also the central role trust and accountability play in their success. Imagine what can happen when victim service providers and law enforcement officers find common ground and shared purpose! Is it easy to stay in one's lane? Can trust be rebuilt once it's broken? Listen in as we explore these compelling questions.
Despite the challenges, Dr. Gilmore highlights the importance of shared goals and understanding each other's motivations. Packed with wisdom and invaluable lessons, this episode enlightens us on the power of collaborative coalitions.
Hey, before we start this episode, I want to let you know that this is a particularly long episode. On purpose. It is about coalitions and how to run an effective coalition and how to run a diverse coalition if you want to actually make a big difference in the anti-trafficking field. So throughout this episode there are lots of jewels that are being dropped. So please listen along, pick up the jewels, implement them and try to. If you can't listen to it all at one setting, come back to it and listen to the whole episode. You know the why human trafficking work is needed To fight for the freedom of modern day slaves. But love, passion, commitment isn't all you need to be an effective and successful anti-trafficking advocate. Learn the how.
Speaker 1:I'm Dr Celia Williamson, director of the Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute at the University of Toledo. Welcome to the Emancipation Nation podcast, where I'll provide you with the latest and best methods, policy and practice discussed by experienced experts in the field, so that you can cut through the noise, save time and be about the work of saving lives. Welcome to the Emancipation Nation. I'm Dr Celia Williamson. This is episode 195.
Speaker 1:Today I have Dr Doug Gilmer with me and he is the senior law enforcement person for the Department of Homeland Security's Center for Countering Human Trafficking, so they provide a lot of information to DHS to be able to do their job and do it with a level of excellence. Doug has a PhD in organizational leadership, a PhD that he didn't necessarily need. He went out on his own to further his own education and knowledge and skills so that he could get this dissertation, and we're going to talk about his dissertation today because I think it's very relevant to what people need to know as they fight human trafficking. He currently also serves as a mentor for the Frederick Douglass Human Trafficking Institute's Fellows Program in DC. The program is worldwide, but the headquarters is in DC. Doug actually ran the office in Birmingham, alabama, and they received the very first DHS Secretary Award for Victim Protection and Countering Human Trafficking. So this is the guy we want to talk to today. So welcome, doug. I'm so glad that you could make it.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you very much, Dr Williamson. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you did a dissertation, and many people do dissertations on things that I would consider collecting dust in a book and a library. But you actually did a dissertation that could be very helpful to us, and it was the outcomes of collaborative, multidisciplinary teams encountering human trafficking, and it's very useful for what we're trying to do today. So can you talk a little bit about, first of all, why you would pursue a PhD when you didn't really need it in your job? Why would you go out and some people would say, torture yourself like that why would you go out and get a PhD?
Speaker 2:I have a master's degree in counseling with a concentration in trauma-informed practice and that type of thing, and so I had a little bit of background in this area. I wouldn't call myself a practitioner, but I feel like I had a pretty good education and background on what being trauma-informed met and dealing with critical incidents and trauma and that kind of thing, and really a lot of that began several years ago when I was the unit chief at the time for our International Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit and I wanted to understand better what the victims of these crimes were going through and how to better relate to the victims and that kind of thing. But it transcends all different kinds of crime. When I got to Birmingham, alabama six years ago to take over running the office here, we were doing a lot of human trafficking work but we were doing it different and we were really partnering with our NGO partners, our nonprofits, our victim advocates and that kind of thing, and realized that we were far more successful when we partnered with the community than when we tried to do it ourselves. And I began thinking back to the way that we worked these cases 20 and 30 years ago and when we had very little community support. I mean, there might be one or two organizations that we could rely on for help, but there was really nobody that was providing long-term, sustainable wraparound care for victims and everything just seemed to work and we were having a tremendous amount of success in identifying victims and making cases.
Speaker 2:And I began to wonder well, and from that point I mean we ended up creating a child sex trafficking multidisciplinary team in Birmingham like a task force, but more of a collaborative or a coalition rather than a task force, because there is a difference. And we were very successful at that and we had these protocols in place and everything just seemed to work. And I thought if it worked here, it should work other places. And I know from talking to other folks across the country that were doing similar things that they were having success. But there was really nothing out there that said this is why these teams are successful. There was quantitative data that would say well, there was an X number of increase in cases or prosecutions or whatever. But I thought statistics don't always tell the complete story and statistic you change one or two variables and how you do your research and you get entirely different results.
Speaker 2:And so I said I don't want to do quantitative research, I want to do qualitative research, I want to talk to the practitioners, I want to figure out why this works, and so the best way to do that was really to pursue the PhD. And as I began looking into these various programs and how these teams worked and how I was going to get the best results, to really get a handle on the whole idea of collaboration and multidisciplinary teams, that's really what led me to the organizational leadership aspect, because there's a strong leadership and organizational component to these teams and what it means to be collaborative, and the trust component and the accountability component that comes along with operating these types of coalitions, and so that's really what led me down that road. I wanted to find out for myself why they worked, and if they worked here in Birmingham and they worked in other places, then they should be able to work everywhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see, I think that the way your brain works and thank God for it is. With the master's degree you understood the importance of the social services, the counseling aspect of it, and then, with your training in criminal justice and those types of things, you saw the marriage as being very integrative and I mean that is the best way to go about it. But so you said you mentioned there's a difference between task force and then coalition or collaboration. Can you explain that? I want to break into this podcast and ask you an important question why did you become so passionate about the issue of human trafficking? Because you know how precious freedom really is and you know that if you could offer that to someone else, it would make your life that much richer, as well as theirs. Whatever you've accomplished thus far in life, nothing is more satisfying than being able to help someone receive the gift of freedom.
Speaker 1:If you're interested in taking the deep dive, in becoming trained, write this down. It's my effective case management with human trafficking survivors. Course, you know many direct service providers are passionate about working with survivors. They understand their why in doing this work, but many don't understand their what to do or how to do it, or when to do it and where and how much to do what. And unfortunately, we don't give permission for someone to be honest and say they don't have the knowledge and skills to effectively work with the population of survivors that have suffered trauma. Well, I have a course on how to work directly with survivors, including the 10 common areas of need and how to assess those areas of need, and then how to intervene more effectively and in trauma-informed ways. Complete my course Effective Case Management with Human Trafficking Survivors at your Own Pace. I'll walk alongside you as you walk alongside survivors, sharing with you my almost 30 years of experience. If you're interested, you can find my free webinar on my website at CeliaWilsoncom. And now on with the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so typically, you know, when you use the word task force, you typically think of either a law enforcement or a military entity and, by definition, a task force. Typically it doesn't involve more than one discipline and you know we would have law enforcement task forces and I've worked on violent crime task forces. I've worked on, you know, vehicle theft task forces. I've worked on, you know, throughout my career DUI task forces and joint terrorism task force and all these different things, and we didn't involve anybody else. It was strictly it was a law enforcement operation and typically those task forces are led from the top down.
Speaker 2:It's very autocratic, you know, there's one person that's calling the shots and that's the way it is. They give direction, you do it. You know, like in the military and having a military background as well, I mean there's kind of the old adage yours is not to question why, yours is only to do or die, and that's kind of the idea behind the task force. Well, ngos, nonprofits, community partners, they don't always operate well in that type of a leadership construct. And so a collaboration or an MDT or a coalition, you know, by definition involves multiple disciplines. It brings together people with diverse backgrounds, diverse education, diverse experiences, diverse resources to come together to solve a single problem. And, by definition, when you're talking about collaborations and coalitions, you're also talking about distributed leadership, shared leadership, shared decision making, which kind of go contrary oftentimes to the way that we often operate within law enforcement.
Speaker 1:And so that sort of leads to your belief in multidisciplinary collaborations, and so your dissertation is focused on outcomes of collaborative, multidisciplinary collaboration. So tell us a little bit about how you did this study, and then maybe some of the findings that we could take away and learn from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Basically what I did. Like I said, I did a qualitative study because I wanted to hear directly from people, I wanted to hear their experiences. So what I ended up doing was without going in-depth into all the methodology and that kind of thing I did a number of interviews of law enforcement officers and victim service providers across the country. I understand that a lot of MDTs they have an education component, they may have a legislative component, they may have a community outreach or whatever. But of course you can't within the confines of a dissertation, you have to kind of narrow your scope. And so I focused on law enforcement and victim service providers, the folks that are really kind of at the front lines. So I did individual interviews across the country and then I also did focus groups with coalition collaborative MDT leadership around the country and I asked everybody whether it was an interview or the focus groups.
Speaker 2:I asked everybody basically the same nine questions related to how does your team respond to this particular type of leadership structure? How does it work? How do the folks respond to it? How does law enforcement or what are the attitudes, opinions, perspectives of law enforcement toward victim service providers? What are the perceptions, attitudes and opinions of victim service providers toward law enforcement. What are conflicts and challenges that your team faces? How do you measure outcomes within your teams? But how are victims that you encounter, even though they may not understand? They may have never heard the term MDT before, they may not understand collaboration, all these kinds of things, but how are they responding to this type of construct? Because even though they may not know what it is, it doesn't mean that they're still not benefiting from it. So those were the types of questions that I asked, related to the research in order to try and draw out these outcomes. And then, ultimately, do you believe that the collaborative, multidisciplinary approach should be standard practice or protocol across the country? And so that's really what I did.
Speaker 1:Oh, good questions. And so first, I'm very interested in the perspectives that each had of the other. What were those perspectives?
Speaker 2:It was surprising because I really felt like this is where I was going to get kind of the most conflict or the most conflicted responses, and what I found is that law enforcement had a very favorable opinion toward the victim service providers. They said that we cannot do this on our own. We are not equipped to do what they do. We are not equipped to provide this long-term wraparound care. Sure, we can provide some immediate security, Maybe we can provide a bag with some hygiene items, maybe a change of clothes, we can get them some food, but beyond that, we don't really have the capability to do what the advocates do. And so they actually had a high opinion of the victim service providers, the victim service providers. Their responses were interesting and a little surprising because they too had a very high opinion of law enforcement.
Speaker 2:But they said it didn't start out that way, and a lot of the people said that they had been conditioned early on in their education.
Speaker 2:When they began their jobs in social work or whatever, and when they began doing advocacy, they were told you can't trust law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn't care about victims, Law enforcement only cares about prosecution, and they said that they were being trained and these more seasoned social workers and people who were training them. They just kind of drilled this into them and they said what we found was that that wasn't true. We were being told to believe a perspective that we hadn't actually seen firsthand and that now, going into it, they went in with these perceptions of what law enforcement was about. But they said, over time they realized that that's not the case, that law enforcement that's there, they're actually just as concerned about the victim. Their strategies might be different, the goal of law enforcement may be different from the victim service provider, but they do care about the victims. And so it was kind of an interesting response. Not that there again, not that there aren't conflicts, but they said generally those things that we were conditioned to believe early on just did not bear themselves out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so critical and I think the research, there's a body of literature that says proximity is so important, even in the area of racial justice proximity, getting to know someone. Because, on our coalition, and first of all, thank you for clearing up Task Force versus coalition or collaboration, because many times people are having a conversation Just go to your coalition and people hear Task Force and they're like I'm not on, they think they're communicating and they are not. They're talking about two different things. So thank you for clearing that up. But also on our coalition, there were initial thoughts about different disciplines at the table.
Speaker 1:Well, I know who you are, I know what you're about and I know what you're not about. And until I get to know you, I'm going to hold those preconceived notions. But over time, as people start to build relationship and understand that they serve the same mission, they start then to break down those walls and revisit their preconceived notions. And even if they don't say all people in this discipline are like this, they definitely are going to say I really can work with this group of people, and so that's kind of how it starts. So anything else that you found in your study outcomes that were useful- yeah, I mean there was a lot.
Speaker 2:When it comes to conflicts and challenges, I think probably one of the biggest conflicts and challenges that was brought up was people staying in their lane, knowing their roles right, and it's one thing to put. And it's not so much knowing the rules, because they said it's one thing, we can put protocols on paper all day long, but that's just a piece of paper. It's what happens in real life. That actually matters, it's the application of those rules. And so when victim service providers cross out of that lane and they try and get too directly involved in the law enforcement piece, or when law enforcement gets out of their lane and tries to get too involved in the victim service piece, that's when you tend to have the biggest conflict. Law enforcement doesn't like when a non-law enforcement person says to them this is what the law says, this is what you need to do, this is a buy, you need to go kick in that door, you need to go do this. Why aren't you doing this? And maybe they don't understand. They don't understand the law, they don't understand what that law enforcement officer, the hoops that they have to jump through, but at the same time, the law enforcement officer may not best understand the needs of that victim if they're not properly trained. And so, really, the application of those roles.
Speaker 2:One of the things that went back earlier in the questioning that I did, and when we talk about the overarching theme of collaboration out of the research, was trust, and trust is the absolute bedrock of any team. Well, and the best research shows and it even bore this out throughout my research is that that trust doesn't happen overnight. It takes two to five years before a team to really gel and to begin working together, unless there are already some long-term preexisting relationships. I mean that can shorten that window of time, but of course, every time you bring another person in, you kind of start that clock over a little bit. And so another challenge was just to link the time that it takes sometimes to build that trust.
Speaker 2:And again, trust is so essential because when you're talking about collaboration you've got to have accountability. It's not cooperation. If we're talking cooperation, it's because I'm asking you to help me do something that's in my best interest. I want you to help me succeed at something. Collaboration bears accountability, in that your goals become my goals, my goals become your goals, and when we're working together toward that common purpose, that shared purpose that leads to accountability. We're going to hold each other accountable when the goals of the victim service provider are the prosecution of the offender and the goals of law enforcement are the protection and service to the victim. That's really where we want to get to, and when we do that, when we establish that trust, we have not only greater communication but we have greater accountability.
Speaker 2:And so the time that it takes to kind of establish that trust there was also there was also some dissension among folks actually a lot of the folks that I talked to about grant funding and primarily federal grant funding and how that tends to oftentimes create a lot of conflict or challenge within a team, because sometimes these grants come with restrictions that say you can't do certain types of operations, you can't do certain types of things, and there are blanket requirements that apply to everybody across the country who's receiving these grants.
Speaker 2:Well, that might be fine in one city, but in the city that you're at you need to do those types of things because the trafficking landscape might be different. And they said that when there's a grant and you've got that grant money, everybody kind of looks at you as a cash cow and everybody wants to be there as long as the money's there, but once the money is gone, the people leave. Now the counter to that is that the people that stay are really the ones who are committed to it regardless and they turn out to be the best partners. And then again kind of back to the whole building trust thing. There's a lot of turnover in these types of coalitions and these types of MDTs and people leave, and every time there's a change in personnel, every time there's a change in leadership, you really have to kind of begin all over again, and that kind of creates some challenge for these teams to effectively operate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I mean you've gone over a lot. First of all, I think you're giving us permission to take that time two to five years to build a good, effective collaboration. Some of us blame ourselves or feel terrible when we know that our collaboration is six months old and it's a hot mess. Well, it's going to be a hot mess.
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny that you said that, because just a few weeks ago I had traveled to another city and I was kind of giving this presentation that I called collaborating on purpose and where I go over all of these things, and afterwards the main point of contact from the state law enforcement agency that's involved in this particular coalition came to me and said I am so glad you said what you said. I said because we've been at this now for like seven months and she said I was beginning to think that we were a complete failure and I was thinking we're about to pull the plug and walk away from this because we're just not making any headway. And she said when you said that it takes two to five years, she said I just had this huge sigh of relief and I realized that we're not that bad and that actually maybe we're actually kind of ahead of the game, but that it's still going to take a while.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I remember our. You know we have a multidisciplinary collaboration. It thrives today. I mean, we started in 2009, but I could tell you two years before that we called it a roundtable and it was a mess and people had to come. They had to grieve, you know. They had to air all their grievances, they had to vent all of their struggles, they were tired, they were fed up, they were frustrated by this issue. Why aren't we doing anything? And then, you know, people came in and said I'm going to save the day. And we're like no, you're not sitting out, You're a part of the partnership, you were not leading anything. It was like it was.
Speaker 1:It was a mess for a while until we were able to establish exactly what you said trust. And once we have some trust, then when we asked for accountability, it didn't seem threatening because it was a part of the mission. We said over and over you know, don't come to the table just to look for the grant funds, Because you know we don't have them right now. We may not have them and if we get them, it's going to be collaborative, and so we kind of those people that were just interested in what can I get for my agency or myself, they eventually got tired of coming and they walked away, and then we got down to the people that wanted to be there.
Speaker 1:And now, years later, we're at the point of building the structure in these agencies, so that exactly what you talked about when the turnover happens, the structure is still in place, the person, the new person, can plug in and their agency has the structure, knows what the collaboration does, can assess the people, knows where to refer you know those types of things I mean. But that that must happen even even years later, I don't know, but yeah, so I am happy to hear that too, because that really gives people permission to sit in, live in the mess until it forms a structure, and I like that. You also define the difference between cooperation, which is to come and help me do what I need to do, versus collaboration, you know, which is we all get in there together and and serve the mission. So, wow, what important work. Is anything else critical that you found?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I. There are a couple of things I think you know. Probably the most like the mic drop moment for me in the research was the question I asked about how victims respond you know to this, you know to this environment.
Speaker 2:And the response that I got over and over again in in the research from you know, from the practitioners that I talked to.
Speaker 2:They said you know most of the victims, the that we encounter, they have never known a healthy, functioning relationship. They were probably, if they're an adult, they were probably sexually abused as kids. They probably grew up in a broken home. They may have been a foster child. They, you know, whatever the case might be, they've never known a stable, functioning, healthy relationship. They were just recovered out of the most dysfunctional relationship ever and so they they've never seen what a healthy relationship looks like and they said so.
Speaker 2:When they they're sitting in a room and there's a law enforcement officer and a victim advocate sitting with them in that room and that law enforcement officer and that victim advocate are speaking to them and they're speaking to each other about what's in the best interest for the victim, that survivor. They said that's probably the first healthy relationship they've ever seen and I thought, man, that is like. At that point I could have just stopped because in my mind that validates that one thing, validates everything, everything that we do right, because at the end of the day it's truly. It's truly about the victims.
Speaker 1:That is profound. I mean, I think that is, yeah, so dead on that. That might be the first collaborative, healthy relationship that's seen. And you know other ways that we can kind of mirror the experience of survivors. You mean, we're in this room with these collaborators and, like you said, your research says we don't trust in the beginning, so we can expect the survivor to automatically trust us in the beginning.
Speaker 1:We just traveled that, that road of trust. We should be uniquely keenly aware that trust takes time. But some of us expect. Why don't the survivor just do what we want to? We want to walk alongside them. Why aren't they just walking alongside us right away? I don't get it.
Speaker 2:Right, you know, I asked folks about you know how they measured success. Everybody said it's not about numbers, you know. And what I actually found was really interesting was when I asked the victim's service providers. You know, when I talked to victim service providers they were very quick to mention victim identification and prosecution. Right, law enforcement was very quick to say victim protection, providing services to the victims, which I thought was interesting because usually you would think that that would go, that would go the other way. But everybody agreed it's not about numbers. At the end of the day it boils down to you know, you measure success by those you're able to identify and those that you're able to provide. You know the appropriate services too quickly. And again kind of back to the conflicts and challenges. You know, one of the other things kind of related to this was when somebody says that they're going to do something and they don't do it, that creates a conflict, right?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so if law enforcement calls a victim service provider and they don't show up or law enforcement doesn't do what they say that they're going to do, that has the potential to erode trust. And, whereas you know, all the research says two to five years to establish trust, once trust is broken it takes even longer to reestablish it again. And so you know that's important. But the overarching theme, like there was one thing that permeated all of this research, and that is the idea of shared purpose, and a number of people that I interviewed, in the transcripts they actually used the words shared purpose, but every single person that I talked to, even if they didn't say shared purpose, they defined it in their responses, and there's actually Adler and Heckscher actually defined shared purpose as a unified goal or mission that all participants are motivated to achieve, and every research participant agreed that without shared purpose, the best efforts are without great effect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:And you can't. And that shared purpose is really what helps to define what success in these teams looks like. And it's not something that we can't you can't write it into a protocol, you can't demand it, you can't order shared purpose but it's something that it's that invisible force, it's that, it's that thing that just it just happens right over time. But it's the result of that trust, it's the result of that accountability, it's that invisible force that brings us all together. Again, where your goals are my goals and my goals are your goals, we're all working toward that unified purpose at the end, and without that we're never going to achieve what we want to achieve throughout these coalitions.
Speaker 2:And again, at the end of the day, there was 100 percent agreement and everybody that I talked to that this needs to be the standard protocol across the country. But there's no way to do it. A number of folks said, hey, we used to do it the other way and that's why we're not, because it never worked. And this is why we're doing it now, because this is where we're seeing the success. I think that there are a number of studies by DOJ, by others, proctor and others that talk about the importance of collaboration in this space and why it's so essential, and that if we don't do these things and we don't find that shared purpose again, our best efforts will be without great effect.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like the gel that fills in to hold everybody together.
Speaker 1:Once I understand your heart, once I understand your mind, once I understand your motivation, why you're here, then I can even some of the mistakes I can even forgive.
Speaker 1:I can get back to the collaboration Once I understand your mind and your heart, and those are subliminal.
Speaker 1:Those are in the way that you speak, in the way that you talk, your passion and the way that you do your work. All of those things that, right, we can't define, we can't put a finger on, but those are the cues people pick up in deciding whether they're going to trust your overall heart, your overall motivation, why you're here, what you do and, yeah, all of those things are so important, I think, to effective work and you can't put your finger on it. So I agree, even in our coalition, you know everybody doesn't show up and do what they're supposed to do all the time and we call them on it and we now can get back to the work. You know we don't define their whole character by the mistake. We define their whole character by the body of work that they've done as they come to the table, not just the mistake. So, yeah, I think, when a collaboration can get to that point, then they can be a high functioning, you know entity that's together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, and unfortunately we just haven't, you know, up until recent years we just we haven't worked this way and I, you know, and I would love to do more research when I retired. But I honestly believe that a lot of the fault in the way that we've done things and, anecdotally, a lot of law enforcement that I talked to of my generation agree with me that the media has influenced over the years the way that we work these cases, and I often bring up, you know, in my presentations because I, you know, I kind of grew up in what I think is the golden era of cop TV, right?
Speaker 1:So Kojak Streets, of San Francisco, Cherokee and Hodgkin.
Speaker 2:And all of those shows that we grew up with, even moving forward. You know, tj Hooker, you know up until you know, just you know, this past generation. We were always conditioned to look at this issue in one particular way, and in none of those shows were they ever trying to help the victim.
Speaker 2:That's interesting, yes, and you know they would do. They would do raids, you know prostitution raids, and you'd see the. You'd see the pictures in the squad room of a bunch of women locked in a cage. You know they're all under arrest on prostitution charges, that kind of thing, or they would. In essence, they would just reexploit the victims and that they would say listen, I won't take you to jail if you do this for me, if you give me this information, whatever the case might be and they were never trying to help anybody it became almost an accepted practice, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It wasn't until 24 seasons ago, you know, when law and order SVU, olivia Benson, elliot Stabler came along where we began seeing law enforcement work with the faith-based community, with the medical community, with social workers.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To try and find better outcomes for victims. Not that that's a perfect show, but that's really kind of the first time that you know that we saw that.
Speaker 1:That would have been good.
Speaker 2:And if you recall, if you've ever seen it, the old movie Annie Get your Gun, the old musical, and in that musical there's a point where the two main characters are they're doing a musical number where they're kind of fighting with each other. They're not really collaborating and the song goes whatever you can do, I can do better. Well, at the end of the day, in a collaboration it should be whatever you can do, we can do better?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I wholeheartedly agree, and I often say you know the African proverb if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. And that takes time. So, doug, is there anything that you want to leave us with? I think we have so many jewels here to choose from. But any last words that you'd like to leave us with, as we try to, you know, go through the mud, the struggle, as we're trying to form this partnership. That seems incredibly hard, but anything that you any wisdom you'd like to impart on us before we go, you know I would just say that don't get in a rush, don't become impatient.
Speaker 2:Take the time to identify the right partners and build that trust, work toward establishing, you know, that shared purpose, because that's really, at the end of the day, that's really what's key.
Speaker 2:And you know there's I mean there's so much more you know out of this research that you know that we could talk about if we have time. But you know I'm also happy to communicate with others Personally. You know folks can reach out to me if they have specific questions or you know that kind of thing. They can email me at info at Doug Gilmorecom that's my personal email where I do most of my communication on this issue. But I would also, you know, suggest that if people want more information they can go to dhsgov backslash, ccht center for countering human trafficking or just Google DHS Center for countering human trafficking, to find out more about the work that we're doing around the country in support of not just training and education but also in operations and helping to support and fund local initiatives and really trying to move the needle forward when it comes to countering human trafficking, both in the United States and outside of the United States.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much for saying that. And if there is an entity out there that would like to some training on how to just be a stronger collaboration, are you open and able to train?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yep, absolutely. Whether I do it on my own time or I do it, you know, on behalf of the government, I'm always willing to come and help. This is a very it's become a very important issue passionate issue of mine that I devoted a lot of time and resources to and you know I can talk about this all day long and I think that I've really kind of developed a very unique, kind of fun way to boil down 175 pages of academic peer reviewed, you know, research, you know, into something that's, you know that's fun and entertaining. And, without giving it all away, I always tell people that you'll never look at a smore the same way again. Okay, when we get done?
Speaker 1:Good, so you'll train on that in a fun way. And thank you so much, too, for just making creating this dissertation and for your body of work and for really explaining it in a way that's very clear and just makes so much sense for people out there that are trying to do this work and do it in an effective way. So thank you so much, doug. I so much appreciate your time and please continue the great work.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I look forward to working together.
Speaker 1:That was Doug Gilmer dropping all kinds of jewels and he he ends with, you know, looking forward to working together because we are going to collaborate on some projects and I'm so looking forward to this work with Doug. So he dropped a couple jewels. So let's just discuss briefly. He told us the difference between task force and coalition, and I think that's so critical because there's so much misunderstanding, actually, on my part and my colleagues part. We were in a meeting and we told people will just go to your talk about it with your coalition, and they were like we, we don't have a voice on our task force and we thought we were talking about the same thing. We absolutely were not talking about the same thing. The other thing he mentioned was the difference between cooperation you helped me with my project or my idea or my mission and collaboration, where we have a shared purpose your goals are my goals and my goals are your goals. I think that was also, you know, very important to know.
Speaker 1:And if you remember or rewind this, you'll see that when he talked about survivors and involvement with survivors, he used the word recovered, not rescued. I really like that, because rescue is becoming very problematic and if you have a coalition, a collaboration, whatever you call yourselves, and you are in the struggle. You are on the struggle bus right now. That's okay. Take peace in the fact that you are on a path to structure, to working together. Remember, when you form a group, remember that you know forming, storming, norming, performing. You remember that process. Like forming, you know you're just getting together and then the storm and storming process where people just don't get along. It doesn't seem like it's going to come together, but then it starts the norming process where people becomes the norm to come in and work together and then hopefully, you get to the stage of performing where you are successful in your performance. So try to hang in there and if you need Doug's help, please reach out to him.
Speaker 1:I'm so curious to understand what how he brings s'mores into his discussion. I can only guess that s'mores are very different, but when you put them all together and some mash them together and then put them in your mouth, it is heavenly. So that's my guess on his analogy regarding s'mores Collaboration is the way to go. If you listen to these episodes, you will hear that consistent theme throughout these episodes we can't do it alone, we have to collaborate. So until next time. The fight continues, thank you, thank you.