To Kick off 5^th Birthday, Creativity Shell Launches Anti-Luring Campaign in an effort to Prevent Human Trafficking.

When the Creativity Shell began teaching sewing/textile arts classes to human trafficking survivors 5 years ago, the one thing they did not expect to find was the surprising number of children who were lured into the dark world of sex trafficking.

The Creativity Shell is a nonprofit organization on a mission to use creative trades to educate and inspire the next generation of makers. The organization teaches sewing/ textile arts, cooking, architecture and other creative classes to students in public libraries, schools and shelters that rescue children from homelessness and human trafficking. Their classes are designed to educate and inspire children by teaching them essential life and practical skills.

During the last 5 years, the Creativity Shell has identified a disturbing trend in the world of sex trafficking called luring and it is happening more often for students today and is completely legal.

What is Luring?
Luring (also known as grooming) is an organized crime where human traffickers hire the services of multiple entities of people to entice vulnerable children to run away from homes and right into the world of human/sex trafficking.

Why is it a Crime?
Kidnapping a child is illegal. When a child runs away however, it is not illegal and very often law enforcement is limited on their resources to help. Human Traffickers are using this loophole to entice or lure children away from their homes under the guise of them being classified as a runaway even when/if they are being held against their will at that time.

Who is involved?
Human/sex traffickers sell boys and girls to people willing to pay for their services. To obtain targets, human traffickers find Target Finders and Target Groomers in multiple locations. Target Finders often hire Target Groomers to build closer relationships with Targets.

Target Groomers are often the same age, might attend the same schools or are in similar social settings are their Targets.  Target Groomers usually have plenty of Targets they are working “on” and many Targets see them as boyfriends/girlfriends, friends or peers.

Where does Luring occur?
Social Media
Luring often begins with the “friending” of the Target on social media by Target Groomers.  They often give plenty of praise, adoration and gratitude to the Target in hopes of gaining their relationship and trust.

Schools  
Target Groomers can often pose as friends or peers in schools.  They are paid by Target Finders (who are paid by Human Traffickers) to find vulnerable Targets and groom them accordingly.

How can we prevent children from being Lured?
By finding the criminal activities in the Lured loophole and closing them, Human Traffickers, Target Finders and Target Groomers can be held accountable for luring children to run away just as they would if they kidnapped the child. This is extremely difficult to do however because it is difficult to arrest someone for be-friending another individual even when the intentions are bad.

To prevent luring, children need to be aware of what luring is and need to have resources to go to if they suspect they are being lured.

The Creativity Shell plans to build a comprehensive coalition of law enforcement, parents, teachers and students to educate them about the dangers of luring and to teach them how to prevent luring in our schools and neighborhoods.

The Creativity Shell already teaches afterschool programs such as sewing/textile arts in schools.  Some of the funds from this grant will plans to contract a minimum of two art teachers to be present in each low-income school in the districts where we are working to provide creative therapy services for children who are most at risk of being lured. The effort of using a fun afterschool activity for students helps to build relationships with the students we are working with and this gives our organization a medium to teach them about topics such as human trafficking and luring.  (This method has been successful for the Creativity Shell in the past.  We currently need more funding to reach out to more students.)

The Creativity Shell also plans to build a dedicated team that will be on-call 24 hours a day and begin to look for students who have been lured away and classified as run-aways.  This group will be directly responsible to help aid the efforts of local law enforcements who do not have the resources to look for children when they are suspected of running away.

When students have been lured away from home, there are only a matter of hours to safely get them back before they have been transferred out of the city and communication has been cut off of them.  Funds from this grant will also be invested into technology to help look for students when they have been lured away by human traffickers.

Once the Anti Luring Initiate continues to educate and re-educate students about the dangers of luring; the Creativity Shell will also like to invest in more technology that will measure outcomes of students enrolled in our programs compared to students who have not and are still being lured.

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