Raffles Institute for Experiential Learning - Raffles Community Leaders Forum

On 10th June, Saleemah Ismail spoke to a group of 200 students at the Raffles Community Leaders Forum about how the plight of trafficking victims in Batam inspired her to begin her crusade for Women's Rights and subsequently to work with UNIFEM. She spoke of two girls in particular that she had met and of the miserable conditions in which they worked and lived.

The talk was followed by a panel discussion where students wanted to know more about the campaign and what is being done to help these girls.

Raffles Institute for Experiential Learning

18 students from the Raffles Institute for Experiential Learning's Community Advocates Club came down to the UNIFEM Office on Nassim Road on 18 August, 2010 to learn more about the gruesome practice of trafficking.. The students ranged from the ages of 16 to 17 and were very keen to find out more and especially about what they can do to end the atrocities worldwide. After a short welcome and intro to UNIFEM by Ms. Pia Bruce, Executive Director of UNIFEM, Ms, Janis Teo from Body Shop engaged the students in a half hour discussion on trafficking, what it is, how it occurs, the plight of victims, how they can help, what Body Shop and its partners are doing to end this practice and how they as students can help.

After this, the students watched a movie of trafficking inn India and Nepal, called "The Day My God Died". Many of the students were deeply affected both by the talk and the movie and promised to talk to their family and friends about it and to get them more involved in the campaign.

Singapore Management University

On 6th September, Katrina Dick and Mrinalini Venkatachalam from UNIFEM conducted a detailed discussion on sex trafficking as an initiation for the 18 newly appointed Executive Committee members of the United Nations Student Association of the Singapore Management University. The students were quite shocked by the plight of the victims and the prevalence of the practice and were keen to discover how prevalent sex trafficking is in their respective home countries (India, Germany, France, Singapore).

16 petitions were signed and a group of the students were inspired to organise a concert to generate awareness on sex trafficking and garner sign ups both on the Sound Out website and on the Body Shop petitions.

Concert at Singapore Management University

Usual classes at Singapore Management University tend to run from early morning to late at night covering a broad range of subjects such as business, economics, law, political science and sociology. However, due to an innovative collaborative effort between UNIFEM Singapore (Part of UN Women) and SMU on 20th October, 2010 called Sound Out!, the various classes ended up centring their discussions on the same theme, "the ills and repercussions of sex trafficking."

This was the kind of impact that the UNIFEM-UNSA SMU Social Awareness Concert, an event aimed at raising awareness about sex trafficking in the region among SMU students had on the psyche of the University body. Sound Out! helped engage bands to play in the University campus, thus attracting attention and directing onlookers to the UNSA-UNIFEM booth where students signed the Body Shop petition against Human Trafficking.

The University did not disappoint. The booth and the bands were located near the library entrance, bang in the middle of campus. Students and faculty walked by all the time, to go between the different schools. While the first half of the day saw students stopping by at the booth out of curiosity, the arrival of the first singer, Weiwen Seah (For This Cycle) brought to the stall just the right mix of interest and enthusiasm. He belted out some popular numbers, stayed a while till the signatures rose to an awesome 202, and then gracefully left. The UNSA volunteers jumped into action then. Ten students, attired in the bright yellow funky Campaign t-shirts (the boys politely refused to change garments) scoured the area nearby for students involved in their project work. The volunteers paid strict heed about not venturing into study areas, library or classes to get signatures, understanding that for awareness to be raised, interest was primary.

The bands that followed, Lydient and The Bakerloo Line continued to build hype on that account. Their astounding music had students lining up to sign petitions at the UNSA-UNIFEM stall. It was then that the UNIFEM informational brochures on the horrors of sex trafficking became a widely sought after commodity. Groups of students were seen huddled together, poring over the information and actively discussing it as they headed back to classes. Seeing as several professors were also intrigued by Sound Out!, the topic of debate/discussion/analysis in many classes continued to involve the issue of human trafficking.

At the end of the day, tired but excited volunteers huddled around the petition box, and found to their delight 595 brand new signatures. The day's success can be summed up in UNSA SMU's subcommittee member Tania Hurry's, emphatic words, "Some experiences are more than just that. Sound Out! was a world of difference in itself." And surely if asked, every student, professor, and staff member of SMU who passed by the stall that day, would nod their heads in silent agreement.

Creative Writing and Multimedia competition

UNIFEM Singapore will be hosting a Creative Writing and Multimedia competition for students between the ages of 15 to 25 across schools in Singapore, targeted to be conducted in the year 2011. A panel of examiners will be established and prizes will be awarded to the winners. The basic topic will revolve around trafficking and will try to capture the essence and the idea of the journey and experiences along the way of a trafficked woman in the form of a story or visual media. In order to make the competition even more appealing to the students, UNIFEM aims to have respected industry players in fields such as advertising, design and the literary circles to contribute their time to judge the contest.

Research has been conducted into the appropriate person to be contacted in each school in Singapore, such as the Head of Department of English, the Head of Pupil Development and the Principal. The list spans across Secondary Schools, International Schools, Polys, Junior Colleges, ITEs, art schools such as Lasalle, NAFA and Raffles and Tertiary Institutions and totals to over 200 schools.

We have explored the different media channels to publicise this event, both conventional and unconventional, such as through constituent magazines and non profit publications, in an attempt to encourage an interest in this topic even at a grassroots level, appealing to both local and international schools in Singapore. The competition is designed such that students with an arts background or an interest in writing can both relate to and translate their ideas about this topic in the medium of their choice.

Jurong Junior College

Diana Ng, trainer from Body Shop, spoke about the situation of trafficking worldwide and specifically in South east Asia and shared her views on the global STOP sex trafficking campaign that the company both supports and partners with UNIFEM Singapore.

Many students were horrified by the videos she showed them and one teacher got up and left because it was too traumatic for her to look at children the age of her own being tortured by pimps.

Singapore Polytechnic

Students from Singapore Poly felt that, far from the typical humdrum workshop, they got to play a role-play game, with myriad parties ranging from the victims to pimps to police officials and Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) personnel, in the ingenious Human Trade Game designed by UNIFEM. Ms Diana Ng from Body Shop certainly got their attention when she shared how pained she felt when she found out that the youngest victim was three years old - the same age as her daughter.

"Human trafficking is not likely to end because it is extremely profitable, being that greed is a natural part of the human character. Most governments will try very hard to avoid this topic as it is extremely sensitive." Ng Zhong Wei, Singapore Polytechnic

"During the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln--the 16th president of United States--fought against the slavery of African Americans, changing the course of history and the fate of an entire nation. Now two centuries later, a new kind of slavery has surfaced and has proven to be just as bad. This form of slavery exists in the dark, right under our nose: human trafficking." Lo Tsz Wang Benedict, Singapore Polytechnic

Ngee Ann Polytechnic Sound Out Launch

"I never thought of such things (sex trafficking) happening in Singapore. It's a reality check for me" Yue Jun, Ngee Ann Polytechnic

School Of The Arts

The session was really inspiring. One girl wanted to know how she could be sure that the money she contributes to support the campaign (through the hand cream) will actually be used to benefit the victims and not be swallowed by Government agencies somewhere along the way! Another boy wanted to know if males were trafficked too and went on to ask whether it was men or women who bought them. Another group spoke about abolishing prostitution because they felt that it is the root cause of this evil. They also felt that organisations working for this cause need to target poverty and illiteracy because they felt that as long as those exist, this practice cannot be abolished.

Institute of Technological Education - Yishun: Blog and Facebook

Murdoch University's PR Proposal

National University of Singapore

International School Singapore

A school talk was conducted at ISS by Katrina Dick from UNIFEM on the subject of trafficking as part of gender migration, something the students study under the Geography curriculum

NUS (pro bono Law Society)

In collaboration with UNIFEM & H.O.M.E, the NUS Pro Bono group has set up the STOP Campaign Blog. The objective of this blog is to create awareness about the endemic problem of human trafficking, with particular attention being paid to the situation in Singapore. The blog will be filled with picture, videos clips, articles and other interesting details regularly by law students. Through the blog, they hope to initiate an energetic discussion on the various legal issues that pertain to this crisis.

Testing Out The Then Newly Developed Human Trade Game At Ngee Ann Polytechnic