Do College Students Have a Lack of Awareness Around Human Trafficking?

Human Trafficking is an epidemic around the world, but if you ask the average person, they know little more than what is shown in media. To try to understand this, we asked the questions of whether college students also have a lack of awareness around trafficking, and if so, is education the best way to fix this? Our literature review found many professions, such as healthcare and K-12 education, are pushing for human trafficking curriculums to be implemented in their fields. To determine if this method would be effective on a college campus, five college students were interviewed to determine what their baseline knowledge is. Most of the questions they were asked were left unanswered due to lack of knowledge; this answered question one. Two out of five students were randomly selected to participate in a human trafficking 101 presentation. Four weeks later, those two individuals were given the same interview, with no contact with the data during those four weeks, to see what they retained. On interview two, both participants showed a drastic increase in knowledge, comprehension, and the ability to discuss the topic more fluidly. This shows that, when done by a licensed professional, a social worker or someone from a trafficking nonprofit, human trafficking education has proved very effective in creating awareness. We found this answered question two in the way we hoped.