NEST Curriculum Providers Serve on Panel

Since the National launch of National Educators to Stop Trafficking (NEST) in May of this year efforts to market the program and get the word out to educators across the United States have been and are on the forefront. We have been seeking venues to share and enlisting volunteers to do some direct emailing to school boards in various states.

The 2014 Trafficking In America Conference, July 16-18, 2014 in West Palm Beach, FL added NEST to their agenda. This opportunity gave us a platform to present NEST to over 350 attendees whose focus is bringing education and awareness to their cities and to enhance their current work in various areas related to supply, distribution, and demand, focus areas for concentration on prevention.  Each of these organizations has a success story on the NEST site. Panel Members that represented NEST are Nola Theiss (ART Reach – a program of Human Trafficking Awareness Partnerships), Jessica Woelker (Prevention Project), and Hannah Sahin (Chicago Alliance Against sexual Exploitation). Each of the programs can be explored via the curriculum chart on the NEST website.

Additionally, Robert Benz, responsible for policy, programming, and strategic development at Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI), presented the organizations Globalize 13 program in a separate forum. Benz states, “We present history in the classroom not as a compilation of detached facts but as essential knowledge necessary for young people to play a vital role in the global community. History must be used to contextualize human trafficking otherwise this contemporary crime cannot be properly understood. We all need to refresh our under-standing of slavery as one person or one group’s unwelcome control over another … because it’s all around us and its victims continue to suffer because of our ignorance.” Both, Globalize 13 and the NEST panel were received with extremely positive feedback.

Our hope is that everyone at the conference will contact educators that they know in their communities and share the information so that the word will exponentially find its way to every school in America. We hope you’ll be a part of helping us get the word out.