About NEST
Mission
To empower and equip youth in America with the knowledge and skills to stand up against sex trafficking and ultimately create a culture that is free of gender-based violence.
Vision
To get human trafficking prevention education in every school and youth organization in the United States. To be a comprehensive clearinghouse that serves to empower and equip educators by providing youth-focused prevention resources to those committed to eliminating sex trafficking in their communities.
We believe that if we work together to teach every youth about the realities and dangers of human trafficking, we can end the devastating cycle of supply of demand for trafficked victims.
Our History
NEST is a product of years of research, lots of meetings, phone calls and more research, and an incredibly committed Advisory Committee and Coordinator that have seen it through to what it is today.
It all started when Heather Tuininga, Executive Director of the Luke 12:48 Foundation, was doing research on the demand side of human trafficking. After doing a full literature analysis, she discovered several statistics about men who purchase sex, one of which wouldn’t leave her mind: 74-86% of the men who purchased sex bought by the time they were 25 years old. She kept thinking “what if we educated all of the young men in this country under the age of 25 about the harms of human trafficking – to themselves, the women they are purchasing, and to their communities and the world? If we did, and none of them ever chose to purchase sex (or consume pornography) again, we could probably end the demand for sex trafficking in our lifetime. Wow!”
So she went to the next stage of research to find the organizations that were educating young men about trafficking and gathered them together for a two-day meeting in September 2012. The meeting was incredible. There were eight anti-trafficking curriculum providers and three interested funders in attendance.
After about 24 hours of learning and discussion together, we decided there was already a great group of existing curriculums available (for educating both boys and girls) and the best thing to do was to get the word out to educators across the country, so that more youth could get this valuable information and human trafficking would decline. NEST was born.
Since then we’ve scoured the country for additional curriculums and other youth-focused resources and created this website for educators to be able to quickly find an age-appropriate, demographically suitable curriculum for their youth.
In 2015, the Advisory Board of NEST began a conversation with Rescue:Freedom International about how to best expand and promote this resource. As a result of those discussions, Rescue:Freedom took on the leadership of the NEST program.
We hope this site serves you well and are open to your feedback as you explore it and hopefully find and implement a curriculum for the youth in your life.
Listen to this one hour interview on Ashes2beauty Bog Talk Radio with NEST founder, Heather Tuininga and NEST coordinator, Yvonne Williams
Funding for NEST
We gratefully acknowledge the three generous foundations that made the financial investment necessary to unite educators for such an important cause. We also gratefully acknowledge the NEST Advisory Committee members for their time and dedication to serving America’s youth.
NEST continues to need resources to keep this site up to date and to connect educators across the country. If you are interested in providing funding, please feel free donate to NEST by clicking clicking here.
