San Rafael, CA – On April 15 at the Marin Coalition to End Human Trafficking's quarterly meeting, the Marin County Office of Education was presented with a $5,000 check from the coalition to help fund efforts to teach students about what human trafficking is, how to recognize and report it. The Marin County District Attorney’s Office co-chairs the coalition.
Mike Grant (center), Emergency Services Director of the Marin County Office of Education, accepts a $5,000 check from Marin County Coalition to End Human Trafficking co-chairs Gina Vucci (left) and Marin County District Attorney Lori Frugoli (right) to help fund anti- trafficking education programs. In October 2017, then Governor Jerry Brown signed the
Human Trafficking Prevention Education and Training Act (AB 1227) into law. It amended the California Education Code to provide that in addition to sexual health education, schools were to provide instruction on:
- the nature and prevalence of human trafficking;
- strategies to reduce the risk of human trafficking;
- how to safely seek assistance; and
- how to set healthy relationship boundaries from the start.
Like sexual health education, the curriculum is to be taught at least once in middle school and once in high school.
The law also provides that training on human trafficking and sexual abuse be made available to school district personnel and that the training be conducted periodically so everyone receives instruction on new developments (for example, methods used by traffickers and local prevention efforts).
In response to AB 1227, MCOE in coordination with the coalition partnered with 3 Strands Global Foundation, a nonprofit that mobilizes communities to combat human trafficking through prevention education and reintegration programs. 3 Strands Global was also a founding member of an education model named PROTECT that was developed in 2015 in partnership with the Office of the Attorney General for the State of California, the California Department of Education, Cisco Systems, and the Institute for Social Research at Sacramento State University.
Through the program, teachers and students are learning about red flags, protocols, and ways to prevent child exploitation through an online curriculum that provides all classroom materials and lesson plans.
On March 1, 2019, MCOE finalized an agreement with 3 Strands Global to launch PROTECT as a pilot program in Marin. The program will cover training for up to 200 teachers through June 2020 and will provide online login access to age-appropriate curriculum. The Marin County Coalition to End Human Trafficking is happy to support the Marin Office of Education in that effort.