Child labor exploitation is headline news. Kidpower’s Full Circle Safety course empowers educators to help protect students from exploitation.
People living in the United States and many other countries can fall into the Illusion of Safety, thinking that something as awful as child labor exploitation could only happen somewhere far away. Unfortunately, the reality is that labor trafficking can and does happen in any community, anywhere in the world.
Hannah Drier’s investigative report in The New York Times provides a compelling description of how this happens in the US: Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.
Drier writes:
“Arriving in record numbers, they’re ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom.”
“These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.”
At Kidpower, we believe that the safety of children is everyone’s business, and that adults in every community need to be trained how to recognize and report the signs of child exploitation and human trafficking, including labor trafficking and sex trafficking. Our two-hour Full Circle Safety course is tailored to teach educators warning signs to look for and what to do if they suspect a student is being abused.
All adults who work directly with young people are educators! Teachers, counselors, administrators, parent volunteers, and other adults working in schools and organizations really know the kids in their community, and are in a powerful position to report suspected exploitation and get help. Beyond the classroom, a bus driver sees a very different slice of student life than a coach, an after-school caregiver, or a cafeteria worker.
Any of these people could be the adult who first detects a problem, or could be the person a young person feels comfortable asking for help. Full Circle Safety means that every adult working in a school or youth-serving organization knows the warning signs of exploitation and what to do if they are concerned that a student is being trafficked or exploited in other ways.
I co-developed this course with Kidpower CEO Irene van der Zande. I appreciate Irene’s masterful teaching about healthy relationships and identifying dangerous coercion, which can be associated with trafficking or dating violence. We also cover aspects of online safety, as the internet has unfortunately become a tool of exploitation in too many cases.
Full Circle Safety is available through the Kidpower Online Learning Center as 2 one-hour modules, delivered as video on demand, with certificates of completion provided. Here is the link.
The first training module is about Sexual Abuse Prevention and Reporting and the second teaches What K-12 Educators Need to Know about Human Trafficking. Our goal is for this training to be widely adopted to prepare educators to keep kids SAFE. Your school or organization can get a site license to train up to 100 adults, in both modules, for under $1000.
You can also request an individual license for their personal use to have one course for $20 or both courses for $30. You can contact us at safety@kidpower.org if you want this option.
Full Circle Safety training fulfills many state laws that require abuse-prevention education for teachers and staff, such as Erin’s Law or North Carolina’s Safe Child Act.
Have questions? Please reach out to us via safety@kidpower.org, and we will be happy to talk with you about how Full Circle Safety can prepare adults to recognize and take action to protect young people from labor exploitation, sex trafficking, and abuse.
Published: March 9, 2023 | Last Updated: March 9, 2023
Dr. Amy Tiemann
Kidpower Senior Program Leader and North Carolina Center Co-Director Dr. Amy Tiemann is co-creator of "Doing Right by Our Kids," author of "MojoMom," and editor/creator of Courageous Parents, "Confident Kids: Letting Go So We Both Can Grow."
