The Kings & Queens Project

Being an awareness organization, one of the main things that the Kings & Queens Project has done since 2015 is to give awareness presentations to various groups: specifically 9th Grade Health Classes. What I want to do in this post is to explain to you what these presentations look like, and what we hope to achieve by using class time in this way. For the last three years I have had the privilege of presenting to over 1000 students on the topic of how they can keep not only themselves, but also their peers safe from different forms of human exploitation, including Human Trafficking. These presentations have been incredibly humbling, as not only have they given me the chance to reflect on the presence of trafficking in our communities. These 90 minute presentation allow me to hear first hand from students that I walk through the hall with everyday about their and their families' experiences with human trafficking and other forms of human exploitation- which is eye opening i

As we examine the world around us, it is far too easy to pick and choose 'big deal' issues that impact each and everyone of us. These are issues that permeate through society and influence the way that we think, act or even buy. Out of these big deal issues, today I have chosen to discuss the impacts of what we buy in our daily lives and how this then impacts other people all around our world. According to the International Labour Organization, approximately 20.9 million people (or three of every one thousand people) are currently suffering in international labor trafficking.  Labor trafficking is best akin to what Americans think of as slavery prior to the Civil War in the late 1800's. It is manual labor, often times for no wage and is vicious cycle in which entire generations of families can be stuck in situations where they are working in terrible conditions for unimaginable hours and they cannot work themselves out of this circumstance.  Many times vic

The question I get asked the most when I present to a group of people on the topic of human trafficking always goes something like, "I can't see the victims. So does it still go on here, in my community? I can't see it, so I typically don't take notice of the issue." The two parts of my personality fight with how I should answer. One expresses utter dismay, and frustration of how an issue so big (human trafficking is estimated to impact over  27 million people around the world) can go so unnoticed. The other part of my personality wants to turn into a lecturer on how much human trafficking impacts our world and those in it. Despite these urges to answer in a effective and passionate speech many of my answers to this question are composed of a comparatively simple statement that says this: If human trafficking impacts one person on this earth, isn't that one too many people? Added in with this statement is a desperate plea to convince my audience t

In our rapidly expanding world that is prone to technology use shouldn't we feel more connected, more socially fulfilled than ever before? We unfortunately, we don't. In our world where technology and social media appears to be connecting us all closer together, more people are experiencing extreme loneliness and disconnectedness then ever before.   This lack of connectedness is concerning for both obscure and obvious reasons, especially in the school setting.  What is the impact on student's when they feel that they have a unconnected, and an unfulfilled place in an learning environment, and in their spheres of influence in general, and for that matter what even is school connectedness? Well, The Center for Disease Control (CDC) defines school and social connectedness as, " the belief held by students that adults and peers in the school care about their learning as well as about them as individuals"   while also identifying school and social connectedness