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

August 8, 2017

            Summer not only brings about warm sunny days and trips to the beach, but it also provides the prevention educators at CAASE an opportunity to reflect on our successes and build upon them.  Some of our successes include a 74% decrease in the number of students who indicated that they were likely to use a word like “slut” to describe a girl or woman.  As one student – like many students – said, “From now on I am not ever going to use the word ‘slut’ and I am going to stop talking about girls behind their backs.”  We also saw a 74% increase in the number of students who thought pornography was problematic for our society, and many students wrote about why their views shifted on this topic.  As one student wrote, “One of the most important things I learned is that pornography can have negative effects on someone both physically and psychologically.  It is harmful to both the viewers and the performers, and I’m not going to watch anymore.”  These two outcomes indicate that students are making connections between the ways that society objectifies certain people and the violence and exploitation those people face.  When we tolerate dehumanizing language and depictions, we become capable of tolerating much more.

            Students also provided us with critical feedback, including a desire to have more opportunities to get involved with creating positive changes in their communities.  This has led the CAASE education team to embark on some new initiatives as we prepare for the 2017-18 school year.  First, we are working to develop resources to help students and their parents discuss these ideas at home, and we will be creating these resources in both Spanish and English.  We are also making improvements to the materials we leave with teachers so that they can continue to weave preventing exploitation into their class discussions after we leave.  Lastly, we have begun work on a project that will engage youth in creating public art for their community that will also raise awareness of the issue of sexual exploitation and trafficking.  Look for pictures in our next update!

Thank you for your continued support of GlobalGiving and the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation.