National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) announced a new goal for the Distributors Against Human Trafficking initiative: train 25,000 beer distribution employees in total across the country to spot and report signs of human trafficking by the end of 2021.
NBWA surpassed its initial goal of training 10,000 employees from the July 2020 launch to the end of 2021, in part thanks to a monumental effort by beer distributors during National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month in January. During that month alone, more than 5,000 employees joined the fight against human trafficking.
NBWA President/CEO Craig Purser announced the new goal today during the first day of live programing at the 2021 Legislative Conference, which is being hosted virtually for the first time.
“We have been blown away by the support our members have shown for the Distributors Against Human Trafficking initiative since its launch,” said Purser. “Our initial goal was to train just over 10,000 beer distributors to recognize and report the signs of human trafficking by the end of 2021. I am excited to announce that we have already exceeded that goal, and we hope to more than double our impact by training 25,000 employees by the end of this year.”
The Distributors Against Human Trafficking initiative centers around an awareness training video to train the more than 140,000 beer distribution employees in the U.S. to recognize and report signs of human trafficking. Beer distributors are uniquely positioned to help fight this heinous crime given their level of access to locations often unseen by the public as they visit around 600,000 licensed retail locations across the country.