(THE PICKET)—Shepherd University students in the human rights class this semester decided to promote awareness of human trafficking through an informative video that will be shown to middle school students in the area.
“Our class has been gathering information about human trafficking all semester and we wanted to find some way to share our knowledge,” said Alyson Hehr, a junior political science major and group member.
Each group picked a different method and means of raising awareness of human trafficking. One of the groups placed stuffed animals around the school with tags that listed facts about human trafficking.
“We created a video with the target audience based towards middle-school-aged students as we wanted something for the younger generation to be able to see and realize that this is something happening in the world today.”
The group decided that they would concentrate on labor trafficking,” Bryant Currence, a senior political science major, said.
“In our research we found that the average age to enter into trafficking is around 12-14. I know there is very little information out there for this age range because it is such a heavy topic, and most middle schoolers would never believe slavery still exists. My little brother is 14 and actually tried to tell me that there was no slavery in America,” Currence said.
The group hopes to make an outreach to this age range due to their unawareness on the topic.
“Our hope is that once the video is put together and uploaded to YouTube, middle schools will show it in their classrooms. We filmed the video ourselves and included information about what human trafficking is, how to be safe and avoid situations that lead to child trafficking, and what warning signs are for the targeted age range,” Hehr said.
The group provided some statistics on human trafficking and specifically labor trafficking:
* According to the International Labor Organization, there are an estimated 20.9 million victims of human trafficking globally. Almost 70 percent of the 20.9 million are victims of forced labor, and 26 percent of victims are children and 55 percent are women and girls.
* The International Labor Organization estimates that forced labor and human trafficking is a $150 billion industry worldwide.
* The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 14.2 million people trapped in forced labor internationally. The victims of forced labor are forced into industries including agriculture, construction, domestic work and manufacturing.
* Women and girls represent the greater share of forced labor victims – Women and girls account for 11.4 million (55 percent) of forced labor trafficking victims, as compared men and boys who account for 9.5 million (45 percent) men and boys.
* There were 377 cases of labor trafficking reported in the United States in 2015.
* According to the 2014 statistics from the Polaris Project, the top industry for labor trafficking in the United States was domestic work.
* There have been 21,000 cases reported of labor trafficking reported to the National Human Rights Trafficking Resource Center hotline in the last eight years.
The link for the group’s video is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wOb9MElVG8&feature=youtu.be
Katie Gayman is a practicum writer for The Picket. She can be reached at kgayma01@rams.shepherd.edu or followed on Twitter @katie_gayman