"Let us build a new Underground Railroad!"

Options for Increasing Awareness and Involvement

• Raise awareness with a "walk". See http://news.communitypress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060517/NEWS01/605170457/1078/Local for one 26 year old's vision.
• Create a work of art- painting, sculpture, video, music- that expresses the power and importance of the issues of human trafficking, slavery, and the right to freedom. Then, share it with others. Can you also attract some media attention?
• Ask your local law enforcement agencies (sheriff, police) to "get the word out" to their employees using free, full-color posters and brochures. Go to: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/campaign_kits/index.html#law for materials.
• Write an article for a youth publication on the web or in print that shares what you've learned. Can you help young people become aware of the risks?
• Sign a petition against trafficking at/for the 2006 World Cup (soccer) games: http://catwepetition.ouvaton.org/php/appel.php
• Organize a "Clean Clothes Campaign" to raise awareness about labor slavery and sweatshops in the apparel industry. Imagine your community coming together to insist on clothes made with dignity from apparel suppliers. Imagine your local government agencies, clothing merchants, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, schools, churches and individual consumers telling corporations that clothes sold in our community should be made in accordance with our community values of fairness and basic decency and international standards of ethical production.  http://www.pica.ws/cc/orgguide/index.html
• Organize a petition or letter writing campaign to raise awareness of issues such as: slave-free chocolate, "no sweat" apparel or coffee, fair trade, or the child sex trade (especially the issue of child sex tourism.)
• www.Globalexchange.org  has steps outlined for a Sweat Free Campaign action plan.  It includes coalition building, research, and meeting with local politicians.  It offers good information and resources to anyone wanting to make a lasting difference in their community. 
• Borrow or buy a video that addresses the issue of trafficking. Organize a video-viewing gathering for your friends or colleagues. After the video, help get a discussion going. What response would the group want to make?
• Consider the large number of medical clinics and hospital sites in urban and other areas of your state. Can you find a way to get them to display free, full-color posters and distribute free brochures to their employees? See: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/campaign_kits/index.html#health
• Do you know how to create a web site? Do you have a "blog" that others visit? Address the issue electronically, allowing fellow bloggers or cyberspace browsers to discover more about the problem. Create links to information-rich sites (like this one!) so your visitors can learn more.
• Can you convince your church, parish group, youth group, etc. to co-sponsor or sponsor a speaker in collaboration with others?
• Can you convince your pastor or parish minister to include a free bulletin insert in your parish bulletin to commemorate one of the following dates? February 27: National Anti-Slavery Day, March 8: International Women's Day; August 23: International Anti-Slavery Day. Here are free inserts, in Spanish and English, that can easily be edited or modified.
• Does your university, college, or high school sell school logo-ware? Is it free-trade apparel, or are men, women or children laboring in slave conditions (in the USA or in another "supplier" country) to put your team's logo on your clothing? Find out. Then, decide whether that's the best way to support your school's spirit.
• There are several free 20-30 second PSAs (Public Service Announcements) available. Go to: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/multimedia.html . Can you convince a local television station to air their choice of PSA(s) 18 days in a given month? That's one day for every 1,000 children, women and men being trafficked into the USA this year!
• Does your city have public transit? Will they support a poster campaign (you can use the free materials available at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/ or you can adapt them or create your own!) to raise the awareness of the thousands of citizens who ride the bus each day?
• Write an editorial for your city's or town's newspaper. Remember- human trafficking and modern day slavery IS INVISIBLE unless you help make it visible. Help others to "look beneath the surface."
• What about creating a 15 to 20 second video? (see samples here, and  here . These samples focus specifically on child sex tourism, but yours could focus on any aspect of the issue. Can you get your regional TV station to air your video (how about 18 times in a month- once for each 1,000 people trafficked into the United States this year). Or, if your city has a "hub" airline, will they show the video at the start of each flight?
• Do you belong to a church group, social group, social services agency, law enforcement group, or professional organization that would make a viable member of your area's "Rescue and Restore Coalition?" (See: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/index.html )
• Include information about trafficking, its victims and perpetrators in organization newsletters, on websites and through other communication vehicles
• Provide orientation and training sessions, or join with other organizations, including nonprofits, in hosting information forums on the trafficking problem.
• Get free posters and hang them up in your school, on your campus, in your workplace, and in appropriate public places. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides full-color posters, FREE, in sets of 50, 100, or 500. Visit: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/about/materialform.html to order, and http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/campaign_kits/index.html to look at samples.
• Encourage other organizations, and health and law enforcement officials with whom you come in contact, to access the growing body of information and resources available to rescue and restore the victims of this hideous trade in human beings. Much of the information is free. http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/campaign_kits/index.html
• Download and use the Student Anti Trafficking Toolkit provided by Vitalvoices.org: http://www.vitalvoices.org/files/docs/College_Toolkit.pdf

• Participate in the "Slavery Still Exists" campaign, a national grassroots public awareness campaign of the Polaris Project. Hold a local event to raise awareness. Get the media involved. www.slaverystillexists.org

• Organize a local walk or run to help raise money to help victims of trafficking. See www.nationalfreedom.org for ideas.
• Join college students and other youth in the Campus Coalition Against Trafficking (CCAT). CCAT is a new joint initiative of FAIR Fund and the Polaris Project. www.polarisproject.org/polarishproject/programs_p3/CCAT/CCAT_Main.htm
• Get on a mailing list to receive a free, monthly newsletter by email. Stop Trafficking offers ideas for awareness, advocacy and action. Go to: http://homepage.mac.com/srjeanschafersds/stoptraffic/index.html
• Sign a petition. Enter "petition human trafficking" into Google and select from a variety of issues and sites.
• Do a "Starbucks Campaign." Steps are Steps are spelled out on www.globalexchange.org  click: fair trade  click: coffee campaign  click: Starbucks campaign  There is background information, flyers to download, and petition forms. Consumers have been demanding that Starbucks carry Fair Trade coffee, and their response has been minimal – and     only if specifically asked. In the meantime, their profits grow larger each year at the expense of the coffee pickers. They are also raising coffee prices! 
• Do you like chocolate? Begin a Chocolate Campaign:  M&M/Mars, the world’s largest chocolate company with annual revenues of $16 billion has refused to consider Fair Trade Chocolate.  For background information, visit www.globalexchange.org. There are sample letters, flyers, free faxes and more. Use Fair Trade Chocolate for school/church/organizational fundraisers.
• Do you send birthday or holiday cards? Buy Holy Name Sisters Justice Cards to get the word out to your friends and acquaintances. There are cards that specifically deal with Fair Trade Coffee and Chocolate.
  See  www.site-ology.com/snjmjusticecards or call 415-239-8602.
• Take a look at what Youththeatre in Lancaster Pennsylvania is doing!