Sex Trafficking and Prostitution: Reducing Harm, Promoting Healing

1. Sex Trafficking and Prostitution: Reducing Harm, Promoting Healing What you can do

2. What You Can Do: • Read Rachel Lloyd’s powerful memoir,Girls Like Us, to deepen your understanding of adolescent prostitution in America.

3. What You Can Do: • Host a screening and discussion of documentaries such as: • Not My Life, a documentary probing the hidden and often unspoken realities of modern slavery on a global scale, www.notmylife.org (discussion guide available at http://www.incommons.org/node/6704) • What I’ve been through is not who I am, a 20 minute documentary on the human rights violations of children being commercially sexually exploited in the U.S: http://ecpatusa.org/what-we-do/helping-children-in-america/witness-video-project/ • Very Young Girls, an exposé of the commercial sexual exploitation of girls under 18 in New York City: http://www.gems-girls.org/get-involved/very-young-girls

4. What You Can Do: • Talk to the boys and men in your life about the prostitution of girls. • Educate them about the issue and that it is an act of extreme violence, not entertainment. • To end the prostitution of girls and stop the demand, boys and men must be drivers of the solution.

5. What You Can Do: • Learn more about how to engage nationally from The Polaris Project: http://www.polarisproject.org/take-action • Spread the word, host an event, make a gift, and get involved in Minnesota through www.MNGirlsNotForSale.org

6. What You Can Do: • Educate your church community about the issue and ask that your church become a publicly designated “safe space” for prostituted youth. • Learn more from the Northside Women’s Space of the Kwanzaa Community Church in North Minneapolis:

7. What You Can Do: • If you see suspicious activity, call 911 and the Human Trafficking Hotline (1-888-373-7888).

8. What You Can Do: • Contact your city attorney and county government for its practices and policies for girls under 18 who’ve been prostituted. • Are they treated like criminals or victims?

9. What You Can Do: • Support businesseswhich have adopted policies to help prevent human trafficking. • Patronize companies in the tourism industry who have signed onto the Tourism Child-Protection Code: http://ecpatusa.org/take-action/promote-the-code/ • Think about supply chains and find out what it takes to provide for your lifestyle at: www.slaveryfootprint.org

10. What Companies Can Do: • Make the issue of human trafficking a routine part of employeetraining, just as employees are trained about sexual harassment. • Learn more about the Global Business Coalition Against Trafficking: http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/entry/bcat • Adopt a zero tolerance policy within the company about engaging in or facilitating human trafficking. Make it a part of background check process for both your board and staff. • Include a clause repudiating human trafficking in supplier contacts.

11. What Colleges Can Do: • Educate students and faculty. Hold symposiumson the topic of human trafficking. • Support the writing of case studies on this topic and their use in the classroom. • Support research that attempts to quantify the problem and analyzes best practices in prevention, prosecution and rehabilitation. • Provide forums for cross-sector dialogue on community actions to combat human trafficking in all forms. • Support student groups that want to take on this issue.