Millions of people are transported each year across international borderlines against their will and forced into a life of prostitution, and one campus organization is trying to raise awareness of the issue both at home and abroad.Tigers Against Trafficking, a campus organization dedicated to raising awareness of international human trafficking, sponsored a benefit concert Thursday night to raise awareness and funds to end illegal slavery.”Be Their Freedom,” was hosted by the Varsity, which TAT rented to house the benefit. By charging $12 at the door, the organization aimed to raise between $8,000 and $10,000 to benefit rescued sex slaves.Natalie LaBorde, second-year law student and co-founder of TAT, said raising money was a tangible way to make a difference but was not the most important goal of the show.”Awareness is key because a lot of people don’t have even the baseline understanding of human trafficking,” LaBorde said. “Awareness is the first step, but it doesn’t stop there.”LaBorde said manpower and community participation are more important to solving the problem of human trafficking than money. She said she was more interested in the strength of numbers for the cause because college students generally don’t have much money to donate.”This is something I’ve always been kind of interested in,” said Alex Klein, religious studies senior. “I was just kind of curious about the issue, especially on a local level.”Many people see human trafficking as an international issue, but Allice Cole, director for the Louisiana chapter of Rescue and Restore, which tries to help trafficking victims, said the problem exists across the state.Cole said thousands of run aways and children across the state fall victim to drugs and pimps. She said her organization is helping to equip people to save these victims.LaBorde said the musical guests — including Winbourne, Leaving Brightside and Jake Smith — all came freely after TAT contacted them.She said 100 percent of the money raised Thursday went to the A-21 Campaign, an international group dedicated to rehabilitating abused women and children and prosecuting human traffickers.Annie Dollahaid, marketing and communications manager for the A-21 Campaign, said the money raised by this and similar fundraisers around the world fund expansion of a facility in Thessaloniki, Greece. The facility is used to shelter escaped women and children and to train people on how to combat trafficking worldwide, Dollahaid said.Dollahaid said events such as “Be Their Freedom” are essential to raising awareness for a world which is largely blind to such a serious issue.”When people know more, the more they can do about it,” Dollahaid said. “It’s happening everywhere, so when people start traveling they can see it. Stuff you would normally just pass by starts to stand out.”Roughly 2 to 4 million people are trafficked across international borders every year, according to the A-21 Web site.Human trafficking is at least a $9.5 billion worldwide industry, according to the U.S. State Department. Most of the victims are women and children. The average age of victims is 14 years old.The C.I.A. estimated one trafficked woman alone can make an average of $250,000 a year, servicing an average of 20 men each day.—–Contact Adam Duverney at [email protected]