To prevent the exploitation of children, we must reach them before sex traffickers do. The best people to prevent the trafficking of children are children themselves. That’s why we make it a priority to speak directly with teens, making them aware of the tactics of pimps & traffickers, the signs of exploitation, and the services available to them should they find themselves in at-risk or exploitative situations. Once ensnared, victims of child trafficking are controlled by threats, violence, and sometimes drugs, making the pathway to freedom extremely difficult. Prevention Education acts as a vaccine to this social ill.

U.S. PREVENTION EDUCATION

Since 2010, Love146 has been conducting prevention education in Connecticut high schools, group homes and residential care facilities. 

As Love146 works directly with children in classrooms, we’ve been eagerly received by teachers and students — whose perspectives on the realities of child trafficking and exploitation are changing right before our eyes. Typically, we work with a classroom of high school students four times over the course of one month. These sessions equip students to understand the realities of human trafficking, better protect themselves and their peers from risk, and get help. At the same time they are being challenged to rebel against those who groom them to be buyers and sellers of sex and rethink a culture where the word "pimp" is a compliment and "ho" is a joke.

Love146 conducts more intensive prevention education sessions in group foster homes for girls, typically meeting with a group of girls ten times. These sessions provide information about sexual health, make girls aware of how pimps recruit, expose the link between substance abuse and exploitation (how drugs can pull you in and keep you there), and help girls see a path out “The Life”.

View our U.S. Prevention Education Program Proposal for 2012/13 here.