The federal government recently released a new plan for addressing sex trafficking in the United States. This year, President Barack Obama, along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, rolled out the Coordination, Collaboration, Capacity: Federal Strategic Action Plan for Victims of Human Trafficking in the United States 2013-2017.
This Plan outlines a concerted effort between 17 governmental agencies, ranging from the FBI to the Department of Agriculture, to assist victims of exploitation. The Plan has four major goals:
1. INCREASE COORDINATION AND COLLABORATION: Increase guidance, collaboration, and civic engagement at the national, state, tribal, and local levels.
2. INCREASE AWARENESS: Increase the understanding of human trafficking among key governmental and community leaders and the general public.
3. EXPAND ACCESS TO SERVICES: Increase victim identification and expand the availability of services for victims throughout the United States.
4. IMPROVE OUTCOMES: Promote effective, culturally appropriate, trauma-informed services that improve the short- and long-term health, safety, and well-being outcomes of victims.
This Action Plan provides some very useful information about how our country plans to serve victims of exploitation in the future. To read the entire Federal Strategic Action Plan, please click here.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice nearly 800,000 children under the age of 18 are reported missing each year. This means that on average, 2,185 children simply disappear every day.
While most think of “missing” as abducted, the truth is that some of these children are missing because they ran away from home or are living on the streets trying to survive. Desperate and hungry, homeless kids often fall into prostitution in exchange for shelter and protection from abusive homes.
Keisha Head, Program Associate at youthSpark can speak to this truth. “As a runaway at the age of 16 I was approached by Atlanta’s most notorious pimp, Sir Charles. Under his so-called protection I was forced to sell my body and risk my safety daily to make him a profit. I was raped. I was beaten. I was held at gunpoint. And I was even thrown from a moving car on a busy interstate going 65 mph by one of my buyers.”
Today is National Missing Children’s Day and to generate awareness of this issue youthSpark is letting people know of the importance in helping these children. The goal should be to reach these kids before they end up on the streets, not wait until they are being forced into child sex trafficking.
Help us help them by donating to youthSpark today. For every dollar that is raised, we are that much closer to keeping kids off the street.
In order to help youthSpark in its fight against child sex trafficking, Wheeler High School students Cameron Harris and Karina Perez are organizing a “Breaking the Shackles” benefit concert.
Organized by the students, the concert will raise awareness and money for victims of child sex trafficking in the Atlanta area. All proceeds from the concert will go to youthSpark’s campaign A Future. Not a Past. that fights to stop the prostitution of children.
Headlining the concert is The Museum, a contemporary Christian rock band. Other performers are Against the Downpour, a local praise and worship band; Made Whole, a local band; and the Wheeler Funk Ensemble.
We are extremely proud to have a student, especially a male student, who wants to use his platform to raise awareness about child sex trafficking. The more young people are aware, the better they can protect themselves from predators that seek to exploit them.
“Breaking the Shackles” Benefit Concert
May 18, 2012
7:00-9:30 PM
Johnson Ferry Baptist Church
955 Johnson Road in Marietta, Georgia
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door or in advance via www.itickets.com. Cash and checks will be accepted.
For more information on the event, read Cameron and Karina’s belief in the cause by clicking here.
This past Tuesday youthSpark hosted a Town Hall Breakfast Meeting at the North Avenue Presbyterian Church. The meeting was a legislative wrap-up panel discussion focused on past and upcoming proposed legislation that will aim toward ending and protecting the victims of child sex trafficking.
The panel included an expert filled discussion with some of the most influential people in Georgia and consisted of:
Renee Unterman, Georgia State Senator
Jay Neal, Georgia State Representative
Kirsten Widner, Director of Policy and Advocacy, Emory’s Barton Child Law Clinic
Kaffie McCullough, Deputy Direct, youthSpark
Rose Scott, Producer/Reporter, WABE
At the end of the event Senator Renee Unterman took the time to give us some of her thoughts on how generating awareness on the issue has helped in the fight against child sex trafficking. Her thoughts have been recorded and shared in the video below.
youthSpark’s campaign A Future. Not a Past. is designed to stop the prostitution of girls in Georgia. In support of its efforts, a 90-day initiative to raise funds for the campaign has been launched. It is our hope to spark a grassroots movement among citizens and community leaders to help us shed light on those that help fuel this lucrative business so that all traffickers, pimps and buyers, are held accountable and receive the stiffest penalties for buying or selling our children.
Through a multitude of mediums and content types, including videos, letters from survivors to their buyers, and national petitions, youthSpark is working to increase awareness about commercial sexual exploitation of young girls and to help stop buyers who perpetuate this crime.
On May 15, 2012 A Future. Not a Past. released the official Public Service Announcement (PSA) that sheds light on this issue and features Keisha Head, survivor of commercial sexual exploitation.
Please watch, share, and donate to help youthSpark put an end to this crime once and for all!
Last Thursday was the National Day of Prayer, an event that aims to mobilize prayer in America and to encourage personal repentance and righteousness in the culture. The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May, inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation.
Each year people gather at the Georgia State Capitol building to pray about many topics that are troubling this country. This year Sharon Simpson Joseph, Executive Director at youthSpark was invited by the state director of National Prayer Day, Jacquie Tyre, to pray on ending the issue of child sex trafficking.
Sharon’s personal prayer called upon the Lord to give us all the courage to make a difference in preventing the exploitation of children. For those who weren’t in attendance, please enjoy Sharon’s prayer below.
“Dear, Loving Creator,
We come before you this day with our children in our hearts.
There is an epidemic that’s swept our city and our state and our nation.
Child sex trafficking, three words that should never be strung together, instead embody a struggle so profound that we are losing girls and boys to it every day.
Help us to know that girls and boys, as young as 11 and 12 years old, are being prostituted right under our noses.
Not millions of miles away, but right here, in Atlanta, in Georgia… one of the top ten ranked cities for this heinous crime, in our nation.
Give us the courage, Lord, to have faith that each us can make a difference.
Help us to hear your voice in our spirits; calling us to look this problem in the face, for in knowledge lays power.
Once we know, give us the path and the journey to stop the trafficking of our children. Help us all to make no mistake
Yes, this means men, grown men, are buying our children in a city where 7200 men purchase sex from under age girls each month.
Lord, hear our prayer to put an end to this travesty. In a world where the voice of a child says there’s nobody who believes in me, nobody who cares if I live or die.
Lord, hear our prayer in a world where children cry themselves to sleep at night on the street or in a stranger’s bed.
Hear our prayer. We can’t go on like this.
Lord, please bless and protect every child that is out there on the street right now, feeling that no one cares. Let our collective and powerful prayers fill these children’s spirits with a clear message of love and hope.
And then, give us the strength, we foot soldiers of your work; brig us more soldiers in your army to defeat this attack.
Wake up the men who are purchasers and perpetrators of this exploitation, the sale of our children to know that these children are our daughters and sons, whose lives are being stolen and lost. Stop their actions in their tracks.
And let them know that there is an earthly and a heavenly price to pay!
Bless our city, state and national leaders with the vision and commitment to lead the charge.
And as I pray for this I pray for the children, Lord, that have already been lost, who have experienced such pain and degradation that we may never understand.
For the girl raped 45 times. For the 12 year old pregnant with her pimp’s baby. For the boy sold by his parents into sexual slavery. Lord, we pray for them all.
Give each of us the purpose of mind and resources to ignite justice and inspire change for children.
Let each of us be a spark that ignites a world where the commercial sexual exploitation of our children will be words from a past that we have had the courage to overcome and to change.
Let boys and girls know that God is with them, even as we adults seek to join them and stand beside our children. Or better yes, in front of them, keeping them safe.
I pray for the words of this song to echo in their own hearts:
‘I found God in myself, and I loved her fiercely.”
Help us to bring out the spark that lives withing each child, within each of us, that calls us to make a difference.
In order to help youthSpark in its fight against child sex trafficking, Wheeler High School students Cameron Harris and Karina Perez are organizing a “Breaking the Shackles” benefit concert.
Organized by the students, the concert will raise awareness and money for victims of child sex trafficking in the Atlanta area. All proceeds from the concert will go to youthSpark’s campaign A Future. Not a Past. that fights to stop the prostitution of children.
Headlining the concert is The Museum, a contemporary Christian rock band. Other performers are Against the Downpour, a local praise and worship band; Made Whole, a local band; and the Wheeler Funk Ensemble.
We are extremely proud to have a student, especially a male student, who wants to use his platform to raise awareness about child sex trafficking. The more young people are aware, the better they can protect themselves from predators that seek to exploit them.
“Breaking the Shackles” Benefit Concert
May 18, 2012
7:00-9:30 PM
Johnson Ferry Baptist Church
955 Johnson Road in Marietta, Georgia
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door or in advance via www.itickets.com. Cash and checks will be accepted.
For more information on the event, read Cameron and Karina’s belief in the cause by clicking here.
Interested in hearing what our collective efforts accomplished this legislative session to combat the commercial sexual exploitation of Georgia’s children? Then attend our 2012 Legislative Wrap Up at North Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Moderated by WABE’s Rose Scott, our expert panel will discuss what legislation we can possibly support to keep moving forward as we work to keep Georgia’s children safe from predators who seek to exploit them.
In addition, attendees will be able to view the first public showing of the Take a Stand Against Demand Public Service Announcement featuring youthSpark’s own Keisha Head and Allison Hood.
2012 Legislative Wrap Up
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
7:30am: Continental Breakfast
8:00am - 9:00am: Panel Discussion
North Avenue Presbyterian Church
607 Peachtree Street, NE
Atlanta, GA 30308
Parking is free for the event and you can enter from Courtland or North Avenue. Take the elevator to the 3rd floor.
Recently youthSpark weighed in on an episode of Focus Atlanta that discussed the commercial sexual exploitation of children in Atlanta and the state of Georgia. Encouraging everyone to focus on this issue with the urgency that it deserves, our own Jennifer Swain spoke on the subject.
While sexual exploitation of children may sound like something that only happens in another country, the truth is that it’s happening in Georgia each and every day. In Atlanta over 300 children a month are being victimized into sexual exploitation and each year 28,000 men in Atlanta are having sex with prostituted adolescent girls.
Additionally, this issue has no social boundaries and is harming children of all races and socioeconomic statuses. During the episode Jennifer Swain informed, “42% of the 7,200 that purchased sex each month in Georgia live north of I-275. This is not just a one-neighborhood issue. This is not just an Atlanta problem. This is an entire state problem.”
It is also important to realize that juvenile justice be held for these children, as many are forced into prostitution and are victimized by pimps that profit through their services. “No child ever walks into the court building dragging a trash bag full of money,” stated Swain. “Children are being bought and sold for profit and their pimp is making all of the money.”
youthSpark believes in the importance of educating the public on how many men are out there purchasing sex from children and make it a priority that these men are held accountable for their actions.
This episode of Focus Atlanta truly sheds light on the issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children and discusses how these children need our commitment and support to reclaim their lives.
You can watch the full episode of Focus Atlanta and youthSpark’s contribution by clicking here.
A Future. Not A Past. Community Ambassadors are community members who volunteer their time to raise awareness regarding the prostitution of children and keeping their friends and family informed. There is no time commitment so this is the perfect opportunity for full-time employees, students, and parents who want to be involved.
Become an official AFNAP Community Ambassador by attending a one-time 3 hour training session where you will be educated on the commercial sexual exploitation of children here in Georgia and the demand for those children, as well as learning the red flags to look for and services available for any child in need of help, or how to report this crime to law enforcement.
Community Ambassador Spotlight
A Future. Not A Past. would like congratulate some of our Community Ambassadors who have joined the fight to disable demand by raising awareness. They are off to a great start and have done amazing things in their community.
On March 25th a new group of Community Ambassadors, lead by Fiyah Oates, conducted an awareness forum on Human Trafficking, with a focus on child sex trafficking. These newly appointed ambassadors are members of an international group called WAVE (Women Against Trafficking Everywhere) and are eager to help spread the word about CSEC within the community. Thank you to WAVE and our new ambassadors.
If you are an ambassador and you have reached out in your community to share information about the commercial sexual exploitation of children, let us know. Email info@afuturenotapast.org and tell us about your experiences as an ambassador so we can spotlight you in our next update.
youthSpark, Inc. is proud to partner with the Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens on his newest initiative “Georgia’s Not Buying It” to hold men who seek to purchase sex from minors accountable for their actions.
As a result, youthSpark has been able to train several area hotels and official city Ambassadors on how to report suspicious activity. Check out this campaign’s official PSA with TNT Sportscaster Ernie Johnson and get the men in your life to sign the Georgia’s Not Buying it Pledge!
7200 men seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls in Georgia each month. Read more research here.
