Human Trafficking in San Francisco
Recent comic I did for Truthout magazine about modern day slavery in the US.
Human Trafficking in San Francisco
Recent comic I did for Truthout magazine about modern day slavery in the US.
In addition to Russian and Ukrainian, the comic has been translated into hebrew and featured in one of Israel’s leading papers, Calcalist. Click here to read the translated article.
Multimedia piece for Penipress and SFGate on Bhutanese Refugees
An interactive flash site that we put together earlier this year showcasing interviews we conducted with Bhutanese refugees living in Oakland. We are currently in talks with the State Dept about licensing the content for training videos.
Produced collaboratively by Dan Archer and Fulbright Fellow Olga Trusova in 2010/11, Borderland tells the true story of seven victims of human trafficking from eastern europe in comics format.
In 2010, Olga spent a year in Eastern Europe, interviewing human trafficking victims at NGOs and collecting their stories in audio and text format. After translating them from Ukrainian, she then emailed the raw text to Dan, who then adapted them into comics.
The idea of the project was to give a different angle to the issue away from the stereotypically photoshopped images of girls in dimly-lit alleyways that often get dropped into articles on the subject. We wanted to highlight lesser-known forms of trafficking, such as forced labour, as well as update the victim profile from solely women to include both men and children.
The comic is 40 pages, single tone colour on B/W, with footnotes, appendix and links to NGOs who fight human trafficking so that readers can find out more. It was financed via crowdsourcing on Kickstarter and was distributed in conjunction with the International Organization of Migration (IOM) to over 120 schools in at-risk areas in Ukraine after being translated into Ukrainian and Russian.
Read an excerpt of the comic below:
Borderland: Seven Lives, Seven Stories as told by victims of human trafficking
Produced collaboratively by Dan Archer and Fulbright Fellow Olga Trusova in 2010/11, Borderland tells the true story of seven victims of human trafficking from eastern europe in comics format.
In 2010, Olga spent a year in Eastern Europe, interviewing human trafficking victims at NGOs and collecting their stories in audio and text format. After translating them from Ukrainian, she then emailed the raw text to Dan, who then adapted them into comics.
The idea of the project was to give a different angle to the issue away from the stereotypically photoshopped images of girls in dimly-lit alleyways that often get dropped into articles on the subject. We wanted to highlight lesser-known forms of trafficking, such as forced labour, as well as update the victim profile from solely women to include both men and children.
The comic is 40 pages, single tone colour on B/W, with footnotes, appendix and links to NGOs who fight human trafficking so that readers can find out more. It was financed via crowdsourcing on Kickstarter and was distributed in conjunction with the International Organization of Migration (IOM) to over 120 schools in at-risk areas in Ukraine after being translated into Ukrainian and Russian.
Read an excerpt of the comic below:
Our latest project: Human trafficking in India & Nepal
Following in the tradition of Borderland: Seven Stories as told by victims of human trafficking, my next major project will focus on visual storytelling to address the plight of victims of human trafficking in India and Nepal. Why those countries in particular? Because approximately 12,000 children are trafficked across the Indian/Nepalese border each year. Because Nepal is ranked the fourth poorest country in the world, giving traffickers ample opportunities to exploit. And because it is in remote areas, often where literacy rates are low, where the same traffickers are able to thrive as a result of poor communication between villages and a lack of awareness of the threat.
I plan to use the visual storytelling techniques of comics to educate, communicate and help raise awareness of this terrible endemic. My ultimate goal is to publish a graphic novel featuring interviews with victims, their families, NGO workers, the authorities - anyone who has been touched by trafficking - to give them a chance to tell their stories in a way that is easy to understand and share. But to do that I need your support. Use the widget below to support this trip and please share/tweet/embed it on your site to help get the word out. Together we can do our part to eradicate this barbaric form of modern-day slavery.
Sketches from the Bhutan documentary project
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
Trailer to a recent documentary Madhu and I put together on Bhutanese refugees in Oakland.
I write for for those who do not have a voice…We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.
Audre Lorde
