Empowering Young Men In Ending Sexual Exploitation

The Empowering Young Men to End Sexual Exploitation (EYM) program engages young men between the ages of 14 and 18 in reducing and eliminating sexual violence, exploitation and trafficking.  It includes four 45-minute sessions during which participants discuss healthy relationships, violence prevention, and both social and personal responsibility.  Surveys designed to measure the students’ attitudes, knowledge, and behavior regarding sexual violence, exploitation, and trafficking are administered at the beginning of the first session and end of the last session.  There were 533 young men who participated in the program.  Only the results of those who attended at least three of the sessions and completed both surveys are represented.

 Attitudes

After completing EYM, young men were significantly more likely to agree that:

• Prostitution is a serious problem in the United States,
• Internet pornography is a problem. and
• Men don’t need to pay for sex.

 Knowledge

After completing EYM, most young men were able to correctly identify:

• The average age at which people enter prostitution, and
• How often people in prostitution experience violence.

 Behavior

After completing EYM, young men said they were:

• Significantly more likely to intervene when a friend used a word like “slut” to describe a girl,
• Significantly less likely to go to a strip club, and
• Significantly more likely to discourage their friends from going to strip clubs.

 Free Response

The following shows the broad themes that emerged from how young men who completed EYM responded to the prompt, “From now on, I will…”

• Respect women more (35.9%),
• Stop watching porn (21.8%),
• Use social media to raise awareness (16.7%),
• Be a positive role model for others (9.0%),
• Stay the same (7.7%),
• Make a personal change of another kind (5.8%), and
• Not buy sex (3.2%). 

Your contributions helped make these changes possible.  Thank you again for supporting CAASE through GlobalGiving!

Progress Report on the Implementation of CAASE’s Prevention Curricula:

Empowering Young Men to End Sexual Exploitation and

Empowering Young Women to End Sexual Exploitation

March, 2016

As schools move toward the end of the academic year, the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation’s education team has been busy facilitating as many workshops as possible. With spring break approaching and summer following quickly after, educators have been eager to engage their students in conversation about sexual exploitation through partnerships with CAASE.

So far, in 2016 the prevention educators have:

• Facilitated Empowering Young Men to End Sexual Exploitation with nearly 100 young men between the ages of 14 and 18;
• Facilitated Empowering Young Women to End Sexual Exploitation with 106 young women between the ages of 14 and 18;
• Scheduled EY programing for over 200 more students;
• Presented workshops on topics such as sexual harassment, consent, and human trafficking to young people between the ages of 14 and 18 throughout the Chicago-land area;
• Developed partnerships with 2 new school across Chicago; and
• Launched our new SWEET college program – Students Working to End Exploitation and Trafficking.

Thank you for your support of our efforts.  Students who have completed the Empowering Youth to End Sexual Exploitation programs have described the programs as having “opened my eyes and brought more clarity along with awareness to this topic” and as inspiring them to “respect everyone regardless of their gender” and to “raise awareness through social media.”  Please continue to support CAASE’s prevention team as we continue to empower the young men and women of Chicago to make a difference.