Empowering Young Men In Ending Sexual Exploitation

Progress Report on the Implementation of

CAASE’s New Prevention Curriculum:

Empowering Young Men to End Sexual Exploitation

            On any given day in Chicago, there are 16,000 – 24,000 women and girls are involved in prostitution[1].  The rate of this sexual harm and exploitation continues to grow due to a lack of awareness and action.  This country’s sex trade industry – including prostitution, pornography, strip clubs, and escort services – is accepted as normal by society, and there is no education for young men to discourage them from buying sex.  In short, our culture is failing to address these problems because it is failing to take concrete steps toward solutions.  Because of the lack of effort to educate young people about the harms of the sex trade, CAASE developed “Empowering Young Men Toward Ending Sexual Exploitation” – the first curriculum in the country that directly addresses demand deterrence for commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking with young men.  In March, Caleb Probst, the Education Outreach Associate for the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, began implementing CAASE’s new curriculum.  As of November 17^th, thanks in large part to GlobalGiving and your very generous support, Mr. Probst has taught the curriculum ten times in three different schools in Chicago.

CAASE originally piloted the curriculum at the Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School, which is housed in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.  It is a school that aims to provide educational opportunities to court-detained youth.  Six students participated in the 4-session presentation, four of whom attended all four sessions.  The students came in with a wide variety of opinions regarding the prevalence of violence and the freedom of choice within prostitution and human trafficking.  After completing the curriculum, the students were still divided as to how much choice women have when entering prostitution, but all agreed or strongly agreed that women did not have a choice to leave.  They all also noted in the exit survey that they agreed or strongly agreed that prostitution is a violent form of sexual exploitation.

Since the initial pilot of the curriculum, Mr. Probst has continued presenting Empowering Young Men at Nancy B. Jefferson, and has also presented programs at Urban Prep Academy and Noble Street College Prep – the curriculum has reached more than 120 young men in Chicago so far.  During the final session of the curriculum, these young men generate ideas for how they can personally help end the sexual exploitation of women and children.  This is a crucial element to the curriculum, as it allows the young men to take ownership and responsibility for solving this societal problem.  Many of the young men from Nancy B. Jefferson agreed to begin using only respectful language toward women and girls, because as one young man noted, “the girls [who start prostituting] usually have low self-esteem.”  One class of young men at Urban Prep decided that in addition to “looking out for the girls in [our] neighborhood,” they wanted to organize a clothing and medical supply drive in their school to benefit a direct service provider in their area.  Another class decided to organize an awareness raising campaign in their school, and they made posters because “a lot of guys just don’t know about this stuff.”

As the school year continues, Mr. Probst will be facilitating monthly presentations at the Nancy B. Jefferson School and will be teaching twice a week at Noble Street College Prep.  He is currently talking with representatives from four other schools who are interested in bringing Empowering Young Men to End Sexual Exploitation to their male students, and his goal is to present in at least 10 schools and reach 400 young men by June, 2011.  As these young men grow more aware, and they begin to put their ideas into action, incidences of sexual harm will continue to decrease for the thousands of prostituted individuals in Chicago.  Thank you again for continuing to support this project and helping to end sexual exploitation in Chicago.