Empowering Young Men In Ending Sexual Exploitation

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

June, 2015

June not only means warmer weather and sunshine, but it also means that the school year is over.  The 2014-15 school year was tremendously successful for the CAASE prevention education team.  CAASE’s educators worked with over 2,000 students in 20 different high schools across Chicago.  These numbers, however, only tell part of story.  Let’s let the students tell the rest of it.

Here’s how students responded to the program this year:

• “From now on, I will not call girls discriminating or dehumanizing names.”  When a man objectifies and dehumanizes a woman with his language, he becomes complicit in her exploitation.  Following the program, 75% of the young men said they would no longer engage in this behavior.
• “From now on I will try to help out friends in unhealthy relationships.”  The majority of commercial sexual exploitation begins as a romantic relationship that becomes more and more unhealthy.  Following the program, 17% of the students indicated that they felt empowered to help a friend avoid this situation.
• “I learned that strip clubs are not fun, and are not very safe.”  After learning about the realities of strip clubs, both young men and young women said that they would not patronize strip clubs, nor would they let their friends do so.  On a scale of 1 to 9, with 9 being very likely, most students rated their desire to go to a strip club as a 1 following the program.  Most rated their desire as a 9 beforehand. 

Thank you for your support of our efforts.  Students who have completed the Empowering Youth to End Sexual Exploitation programs went on to say that the programs have “opened my eyes and brought more clarity along with awareness to this topic” and have inspired 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.