COUNTY THE FIRST TO OFFER PREVENTION TRAINING FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING

November 3, 2022 4:00 a.m.

Douglas County will be the first county in the state to have the ability to offer human trafficking prevention instruction to all of its 6th to 12th grade students

A Mercy Foundation release said of the thousands of applications, in 2019, the Douglas County Human Trafficking Task Force was one of 62 grants worldwide to be selected for a Zonta International Centennial Grant. The goal of the grant was to offer a human trafficking prevention curriculum for the county's schools. In cooperation with Bend's in Our Backyard prevention organization, the task force hosted a victim speaker in four of the county's schools in late 2019. By February 2020, the task force led a workshop to instruct teachers on how to use IOB's Teens Against Trafficking curriculum in their schools.

The release said after that, COVID-19 shut down the schools and the remaining training. The task force, led by Mercy Foundation's Violence Prevention Program Manager Marion Pearson, IOB and the Roseburg Zonta Club used the delay to improve the curriculum's content and convert it to a program that teachers could implement without first attending a workshop.

All 26-plus of the county's middle and high schools recently received a Human Trafficking Prevention curriculum. Pearson said, “I'm really excited that we were able to get this curriculum into the hands of our most vulnerable population – our youth”. Pearson said it teaches them how to recognize the red flags of trafficking and “…how to help a friend”.

Nationally, half of the trafficked victims are between the ages of 12 and 17 and the average age of being recruited is 13. The curriculum meets the Oregon Health Standards for the Promotion of Sexual Health and the Promotion of Mental, Social and Emotional Health for 6th to 12th grades. It also satisfies Erin's Law, established in 2015, to adopt child sexual abuse prevention programs. Pearson said “the goal of this curriculum is to stop trafficking before it starts by teaching our youth risk factors and predatory behaviors”.

To help parents and the public learn more about trafficking and to premiere parts of the curriculum, the DCHTTF and Roseburg Zonta Club are hosting a Stand-Up Awareness & Education event November 11th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Roseburg Public Library.

To learn more about Mercy Foundation's human trafficking prevention efforts, call 677-4818 or go to. http://www.up2usnow.org/task-force.html