The Action

The creative students used art as an innovative campaign messaging tool to highlight the issue in their school and local community by creating stunningly visual communications in the form of hand-drawn posters and cards. Through research they discovered ‘zines’, self-published mini-magazines, which they embraced to help spread their message. They promoted these through an inspiring social media campaign and distributed them throughout their school and local community.

The team wanted to encourage people to respond to the problem in a practical way. They asked staff at their school to provide photographs of themselves as thirteen year olds (the average age a child is trafficked). In an innovative fundraising effort, these were displayed in the main hall, and students had the opportunity to pay to ‘Guess the Teacher’.

The Impact

The young social innovators raised much needed money for Ruhuma, which works on a national level with women affected by sex trafficking. Representatives from Ruhuma indicated that, because the team members are a similar age to many of those who are trafficked, their project demonstrates solidarity that may help raise the self-esteem of those affected by trafficking.