Educate Marin students about human trafficking

Recently, a local newspaper reported on the Vallejo Police Department’s rescue of a 12-year-old victim of human trafficking in that community. The story is a reminder that exploitation crimes nearby can prove to be hubs for adjoining cities. When will we wake up and understand that we are not immune to this happening in our own county?

As co-president of Soroptimist International of Marin, a member of the Marin Coalition to End Human Trafficking and the county liaison for the PROTECT (Prevention Organized to Educate Children and Communities on Trafficking) team, I encourage all of us to actively educate our students. They must understand what human trafficking is, who the perpetrators are and how the role of social media, apps and gaming are used to commit these crimes.

We can’t continue to look the other way and say it doesn’t happen here, or that we have more urgent issues. How can we live with ourselves knowing we have the ability to prevent, but we are not actively utilizing it?

Our team with PROTECT has continued to educate teachers, staff, community members, church leaders and service providers. Let’s empower our youth today by making sure they actually receive the education — which has been slow to implement to students — so they can better protect themselves and make sure this education equips them to stay safe.

We have the tools to prevent this from happening to our youth. We must take action before another 12-year-old like the girl in Vallejo is exploited. Every student should receive this message.

— Marlene Capra, Mill Valley