The National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) is looking for high schools interested in implementing the TraffickSTOP (Signs to Observe and Prevent) program during the 2023-2024 school year. NW3C developed the TraffickSTOP curriculum to educate high school students on identifying and preventing human trafficking. The program takes a proactive approach, teaching students about the realities of human trafficking and providing them a safe environment to discuss and learn about the crime and related topics. TraffickSTOP is a voluntary extracurricular activity designed for a small group of students (referred to as “team members”) to engage their School Resource Officers (SRO), social workers, law enforcement, guidance counselors, social service providers, teachers, and other community stakeholders to learn about human trafficking and the impact it may have on their peers, school, community, and themselves. Project partners include the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Association of School Resource Officers; the project is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime.

The TraffickSTOP curriculum consists of 12 meeting plans with background information, learning objectives, warm-up activities, student-led interactive discussions, and time for reflection and review. The curriculum begins with an introduction to the topic of human trafficking and incorporates information on healthy relationships, online safety, avoiding misinformation, setting healthy boundaries, and community risk. During one of the meetings, facilitators will invite one or more subject matter experts to talk with team members about their experiences with human trafficking and answer questions. The program culminates in an awareness week, with team members creating activities and events to inform the larger student body.

Primary facilitators for the TraffickSTOP program are SROs and other local law enforcement representatives. The curriculum may be co-facilitated by social workers, guidance counselors, teachers, and others who have experience with delivering training to youth audiences. NW3C and its project partners have developed a facilitator onboarding training for participating schools, which is currently being adapted into an online course with a series of short videos.

The TraffickSTOP toolkit is currently available to pilot schools and will be made openly available at the end of the project period—tentatively, the summer of 2024. The toolkit contains a variety of documents that can help facilitators work through the curriculum, including an Activities Guide, guidance on discussing sensitive topics, and a component on adapting meeting plans for online delivery, should that be required. In addition, to help facilitators plan the schedule for their team, there is a School Year Overview with a brief description of each meeting and a Project Planning Guide covering what facilitators should be doing each week to prepare for human trafficking awareness week. If you are interested in viewing any of the toolkit materials, including meeting plans and accompanying activities, please email traffickstop@nw3c.org.

TraffickSTOP has been piloted in one school during the 2021–2022 school year: Denbigh High School in Newport News, Virginia. It has been implemented in four additional schools during the 2022–2023 school year: Northeast and Southeast Lauderdale High Schools in Meridian, Mississippi; High Road School in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts; and Mundelein High School in Mundelein, Illinois. NW3C received positive feedback from students who participated. Here are some of their responses:

• “I wish it was an everyday thing because it was very engaging.”
• “I loved every second of it. Speaking for the program was very exciting and fun.”
• “The program was amazing; I really feel like it opened everyone’s minds to something that isn’t really talked about that often.”

NW3C is currently seeking to identify a few schools to implement the program during the 2023–2024 school year. If you think that a school in your area might be interested, please email Laura Cook, NW3C Program Manager, at lcook@nw3c.org. You can learn more at the TraffickSTOP website.

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