According to the group's website, while accurate numbers are hard to come by, more people may be held in slavery now than at any time in history.

"When I heard there were 27 million people in slavery, I was just floored by it," Williams says.

His interest piqued, Williams attended a panel at the Kennedy School of Government about slavery.

"A lot of people were talking and making speeches, and in the middle I stood up and asked what I could do to help," Williams says.

After the panel, Jesse A. Sage '98, the AASG's associate director, offered Williams an internship. Williams accepted and spent the summer in the group's Washington, D.C., office.

In early August, he received an e-mail from the group asking if he would like to travel to Sudan with a Swiss rescue group, Christian Solidarity International (CSI), in order to see first-hand what the AASG was fighting for.

The trip would be a dangerous one. For over a decade, a fundamentalist Islamic regime in northern Sudan has been waging a holy war against the Dinka people of the south.