The Kings & Queens Project: A Look Inside our Presentations

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 in of itself. Through this experience, everyone involved has been given the opportunity to break the stigma and assumption that trafficking does not, "happen here" or impact our schools or communities.  These presentations have done so much more than just create a conversation about , but they cultivate a culture of awareness in our school and greater community which is unrivaled. It is incredible to see a group of 14 year olds open up their world view in a way that they are now better equipped to view and analyze the issues that surround them.

So what do our presentations look like, and what is the end goal in providing them?

By the end of the 90 minute lesson we hope that students will be able to communicate and identify the general concept of global human trafficking to others in their immediate community. Additionally, we hope that student's walk away with a greater understanding and awareness of the issue and it's intricacies then they had when walking into health.

-For a further discussion on the importance of awareness education check out our blog post from December on the Importance of Awareness Education- 

For those of you who have never had the opportunity to view one of our presentations here is a quick overview. 

We begin class by watching a video produced by the End it Movement, a collation of different human trafficking organizations. This video portrays an awareness campaign conducted by the End it Movement during 2013's March Madness Tournament in Atlanta. The video provides context to the students about what we will be discussing, but also the opportunity to dispel some common myths about trafficking that the video displays, for example the fact that women are the only individual who are trafficking and the traffickers are men. (In fact, anyone can be trafficked and anyone can be the trafficker.) This turns into a discussion about what the class knows about trafficking and also the distribution of key figures and statistics about the issue. The entire lesson works to dispel misconceptions about the issue as well as to connect the issue to an tangible concept that students can be better able to grasp and comprehend. (Such as the connection of human trafficking to Colorado, or labor trafficking to the food they eat and the clothes they wear.) In the spirit of breaking down misconceptions about the issue we also have students place on the board where they typically think human trafficking occurs. This allows for a transitional discussion about the economics of human trafficking and why it occurs in our world today. Finally the lesson is wrapped up with the students placing a question that they have on a notecard and then these notecards are read aloud so as to answer students questions without making them feel uncomfortable about speaking on the subject.

In total our presentations provide a safe space to learn about the issue of human trafficking and how they can work to illuminate the darkness of this issue in small and big ways.

If you have any questions about human trafficking, or want to host a presentation reach out to us over email at: jacob@kingsandqueensproject.org and come to Illuminate, an awareness walk where you can learn more about KQ and hear from local organizations about what they are doing to combat human trafficking and what you can do to engage in their mission.  Illuminate will be held on April 19th, in Longmont, Colorado and is free and open to the public.