By Tammy Warren, Presbyterian News Service.
An interactive, anime-style gaming app for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets has an extraordinary mission: to keep children and young adults, ages 11 to 14, from becoming victims of human traffickers.
After two years in development, the Awareness Combats Trafficking (ACT) app will be available for free download in English and Spanish through iOS app store, Google Play, and Lifeboat-ACT.com, beginning February 21.
The ACT app is the brainchild of lifelong Presbyterian Jill Bolander Cohen, founder and executive director of the Lifeboat Project, a Central Florida nonprofit that works to fight human trafficking and is a recent addition to the 1001 New Worshiping Communities initiative of the PC(USA). It’s designed to educate junior high and high schools students about the dangerous, ever-changing schemes of traffickers.
“Based on calls to the National Trafficking Hotline, Florida ranks third in the nation for trafficking, and my church sits about two minutes from one of the most heavily trafficked parts of our state,” Cohen says.