THERE CAN BE NO FREEDOM WITHOUT EDUCATION

Education has long been used in the prevention of human trafficking. For instance, embassies and consulates include trafficking warnings and trafficking hotlines in information to individuals seeking visas, especially those individuals coming to be domestic servants. Tourists are educated in airports about the legal penalties of sexually exploiting vulnerable children.  Flight attendants and hotel operators are trained in how to recognize and safely report potential trafficking victims. Members of the law enforcement community are educated in the procedures for identifying trafficking victims among migrant and refugee flows. International organizations have targeted aid for trafficking awareness education in countries where a severe lack of economic opportunity makes teens extremely vulnerable to sham offers of jobs abroad.

But education needs to expand beyond the awareness. Traffickers are increasingly preying upon children’s social vulnerability, not just economic needs.  Social vulnerability – such as feelings of alienation, unresolved emotional or physical abuse, learning disabilities, or unfamiliarity with a new culture and language – means that children of every socio-economic background are at risk of being taken advantage of by traffickers.

Many young people often have unlimited and unmonitored access to the internet which can endanger them. Traffickers set up fake profiles on social media and seek children they can extort into trafficking.  A child sends a half-naked photo to their “new friend” on social media, who then threatens to send the photos to the child’s parents and friends – unless the child does as they say.

No child is immune, but some are now smarter than their would-be traffickers. Non-governmental organizations around the world have been taking prevention to new heights through programs to train children in schools on how to avoid being ensnared by human traffickers.  Including age-appropriate, anti-trafficking education for teachers and school children in the standard curriculum for all children means that the suffering and harm caused by human trafficking can be halted early – or avoided altogether. Targeting at-risk communities with prevention and educational campaigns can stop the flow of people being trafficked in the United States, and in countries across the globe.

0%
of traffickers are known to their victims
0USD
average cost of an enslaved person
02B
dollars generated by forced labor in the U.S. annually

MODERN SLAVERY CURRICULUM

The Human Thread Foundation is currently developing a curriculum for middle and high school children and teens that serves as the basis for local curricula around the world, developed in close collaboration with local partners.

The curriculum describes various types of human trafficking (sex trafficking and labor trafficking; international and domestic trafficking; adult and child trafficking). The course introduces students to international, foreign, national, and U.S. law and policy on human trafficking, how to identify victims, and common health concerns among trafficking victims as background for a demand-related approach.

The curriculum is currently developed to be used in tandem with the Bound to Freedom exhibition, and can also be incorporated traditional classroom setting. It includes a syllabus, teacher-training manual, basic materials and exercises, special in-class and extra-curricular projects; and inter-active media technologies activities.

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