About the Cause

600,000-800,000 slaves are brought across international borders every year. To put this in perspective, from 1492 to 1850, 15 million slaves came to the New World from Africa; if this trafficking continues at today's rate, more slaves will be trafficked in 25 years than throughout the entirety of the approximately 350 year-long Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Take a second to let that sink in. Slavery today is 10 times bigger than it was at the height of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Trafficking human beings is big business; it is a 13 billion dollar industry per year, illegally topped only by the trafficking of guns.

80% of these slaves are teenage girls trafficked for sex. In poor countries such as Cambodia, impoverished girls are approached by men or women and offered great jobs such as selling fruit or working as a maid in a hotel. They readily accept, and then are unwillingly sent to a brothel, thus are tricked and forced into prostitution. After that, they are kept there against their will and are horribly treated. For more information on this topic and other deeply misogynistic acts against women internationally, please read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

The only route proven to stop sex trafficking is via education. Victims usually do not have access to a proper education, and thus have no better options than to accept jobs from strangers. Changing laws in the future is important, but the only way to stop sex trafficking is by changing the culture: the way to change culture is through education. Building schools not only keeps girls from being trafficked, but it also shows women that they can become more assertive.

"Empowering women begins with education."