By Kourtney Webb
Students at Queens College will participate in on going efforts to end Sex trafficking and forced labor through Shut Out Trafficking campaign.
The National Consortium for Academics and Sports has partnered with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s awareness against human trafficking, for it’s third year. The campaign is designed to bring awareness of Sex trafficking to 10 university and college campuses across the United States each academic year.
The campaign uses college athletes, coaches, and athletic administrators to educate the student body on Human trafficking. All students participating will have the chance to hear from survivors, hold discussion groups, and attend film screenings, in an effort to bring awareness and motivate students to get involved.
Human trafficking is a form of modern day slavery, in which many cases go unreported. Human trafficking crimes are defined by the United States Department of Justice as the act of compelling or coercing a person’s labor, service, or commercial sex acts.
There are an estimated 5.5 million child victims of trafficking and forced labor globally, and between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year. Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry, behind illegal drug smuggling and fire arms trafficking. Many are naïve to the fact that Sex trafficking is not completely esoteric to third world countries. Thousands of those men, women, and children are right here in the United States.
The U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s End Trafficking Project’s mission is for communities to take important meaningful steps to protect children from predators of sex trafficking.
The events will include a screening of the film “Not My Life.” The documentary was filmed on five continents, in a dozen countries where children are exploited on a daily basis.
“Human traffickers are earning billions of dollars on the backs and in the beds of our children,” said the films director. The documentary takes the viewers on a journey as a Human Sex traffic worker, highlighting the terrible practices child laborers are subjected to.
The National Consortium for Academics and Sports has used sports as it’s platform, for 30 years, to educate and empower young adults to “effect powerful positive social change.”
Through last years Shut Out Trafficking seminars, nearly 57,000 students on eight college campuses throughout the U.S. were educated on the subject of sex trafficking.
This years Shut Out Trafficking events will be held February 8-15 at Queens College, The City University of New York.
