The Acteens of Washington’s First Baptist Church hosted a meeting Saturday to educate people about human trafficking in places around the world, including the United States and North Carolina.

The impetus for the meeting developed when the Acteens, a Baptist missions organization for girls in grades seven through 12, attended the national Blume Conference in Orlando, Fla., July 13-16, 2011. Human trafficking was among the topics discussed at the conference. The youth and adults who attended the conference were encouraged to organize community meetings that would educate the community and raise its awareness of modern-day slavery.

Organizers of Saturday’s meeting said when it comes to human trafficking, North Carolina is among the top 10 states in the nation. January was designated Human Trafficking Awareness Month. Acteen leaders Beth Brickhouse, Megan Jernigan and Brenda Davis helped the Acteens organize the meeting.

Those who attended the meeting could view a human-trafficking exhibit provided by Pam Strickland, founder of Eastern North Carolina Stop Human Trafficking Now, which is based in Farmville. The exhibit sold Fair Trade products including purses and baskets woven by women in Cambodia, silk scarves woven by women in India, chocolate, glass-bead bracelets and more.

Fair Trade products are certified not to have been made by slaves and/or child labor, according to the ENCSHTN website. The products are exploitation-free, according to the website.

Strickland provided information, including statistics, regarding human trafficking.

Youths participating in the event served a special blend of coffee raised in Thailand, where human trafficking, especially in young girls, is a major concern, according to event organizers.

The Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee Co. partners with Bright Hope World and the Integrated Tribal Development Program to provide a living wage to farmers who once grew poppies for the opium trade but now grow specialty-grade coffee.

That program is “giving these Thai farming communities a second chance. In addition to be able to provide for their families, the people who grow La Mai coffee can protect their children from being trafficked in the sex trade in Bangkok,” reads a Land of a Thousand Hills pamphlet.

Casey King, an 11th-grader at Washington High School and an Acteen, prepared a PowerPoint presentation in which she presented statics about human trafficking and tips that may help people identify locations where human trafficking could be occurring.

Kasey Doughtie, a ninth-grader at Trinity Christian School and an Acteen, shared resources and websites that provide information about human trafficking.

Participants were exposed to several human-trafficking scenarios, during which they made decisions that would keep them safe or result in them being “trafficked.”

Jimmy Tyrrell Jr., an officer and instructor with the Vidant Medical Center Police Department, provided a condensed version of the training he uses to train other law-enforcement personnel.

“Human trafficking is equivalent to modern-day slavery. This needs to stop. Remember, they are the victims,” Tyrrell said.

Organizers said North Carolina ranks high nationally when it comes to human trafficking because the Interstate 95 corridor runs through the state, it’s a coastal state, it has several large military bases, it has many truck stops and a large migrant-worker population. Those factors are part of the human-trafficking system, organizers said.

For more information about human trafficking and Eastern North Carolina Stop Human Trafficking Now, visit http://www.encstophumantrafficking.org.