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trafficking may face additional barriers, such as a lack of institutional awareness and discrimination, when attempting to access social services, community support, resources, and relief. The fear of continued violence and oppression by providers may further silence LGBT victims. Such barriers increase for transgender victims, for whom social services related to sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and reproductive health are limited or non-existent. LGBT victims without legal immigration status may be eligible for a U-Visa or T-Visa or file an Asylum application based on fear of persecution concerns in their country of origin because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. COORDINATED COMMUNITY RESPONSE A multidisciplinary coordinated community response (CCR) is one of the best ways for communities to respond to victims of trafficking. Just as with domestic violence survivors, victims of trafficking have a variety of needs. Developing and maintaining a coordinated community response to human trafficking requires the collaboration of many individuals, agencies, and organizations. Efforts to coordinate a response to human trafficking should promote awareness and education through ongoing conversations about the issue. Despite efforts to educate the public about the extent of modern-day slavery, many communities are still largely unaware of the scope of human trafficking and its devastating impact. As with a coordinated community response to domestic violence, a coordinated community response to human trafficking should have a clear purpose or range of goals, such as organizing community members to identify, respond, and provide safe, meaningful, and effective services to victims.The Florida Department for Education (FDOE) was awarded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cooperative agreement to promote Adolescent Health through School-Based HIV/STD Prevention and School-Based Surveillance for five years. The Child Human Trafficking addition to Florida’s Sexual Health Education Community Outreach Tool Kit is designed to provide resources to identify human trafficking and raise awareness within the community. The Governor’s Office of !doption and Child Protection and Department of Juvenile Justice collaborated with FDOE’s Healthy Schools to revise the Tool Kit. Human trafficking training helps to raise awareness in schools and in the community. Educators, other school/community based professionals and parents have a critical role to play in recognizing potential human trafficking and in helping potential victims access specialized services. We encourage you to use these resources in the stand against human trafficking. The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, slavery or a commercial sex act. Currently, there are approximately 30 million people enslaved throughout the world with 3 million located right here in the United States. Many of these victims are lured with false promises of financial or emotional security; instead, they are forced or coerced into commercial sex (prostitution), domestic servitude, or other types of forced labor. Any minor under the age of 18 who is induced to perform a commercial sex act is a victim of human trafficking according to U.S. law, regardless of whether there is force, fraud, or coercion. Increasingly, criminal organizations, such as gangs, are luring children from Did You Know? Florida is the third largest hub for human trafficking in the United States. Each year, as many as 300,000 American children are at risk for sexual exploitation. The average age a child enters the commercial sex trade is 11-13 years old. local schools into commercial sexual exploitation or trafficking. Since 2009, Florida Departments of Juvenile Justice and Children and Families have investigated over 1,500 child trafficking cases. Child sex trafficking is a form of human trafficking defined as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, and/or receipt of a child for the purpose of exploitation before the child reaches 18 years of age.” Sex trafficking has been described as “the largest slave trade in history” and as the fastest growing form of contemporary slavery. As many as 300,000 school-age children are at risk for sexual exploitation each year in the United States. One in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually assaulted by the age of 18. The life expectancy of the commercially exploited “prostitute” is seven years. Up to 90% of minor victims are under the control of a pimp. (Shared Hope, 2014) Approximately one in seven youth online (10 to 17 yearsold) received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet. Victims of trafficking can be any age, race, gender, or nationality, including U.S. citizens. Child trafficking can take a variety of forms including commercial sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, or forced labor. Those who recruit minors for the purpose of commercial sex are violating U.S. anti-trafficking laws, even if there is no force, fraud, or coercion. Trafficking victims can be men or women, boys or girls, United States citizens or foreign nationals. Human trafficking can involve school-age youth, particularly those made vulnerable by unstable family situations, or who have little or no social support. The children at risk are not just high school students – studies show that the Protection of Vulnerable Persons Law Florida Statute 415.102 imposes a fine of up to $1 million on any public or private college or university whose administration or law enforcement agency willfully and knowingly fails to report child abuse that occurs on its campus, in any of its facilities, or at/during college or university-sponsored events and functions. “In the wake of the child abuse cover-up scandals at Penn State and Syracuse that rocked the nation last year, Florida will enact the most expansive abuse reporting law and the nation’s toughest penalties for failing to report abuse.” Governor Rick Scott average age a child is trafficked into the commercial sex trade is between 11 and 14 years old. Traffickers may target young victims through social media websites, telephone chat-lines, after school programs, on the streets, at shopping malls or in clubs. In some cases, teens who are already involved with the traffickers are used to recruit other victims. In fact, a person can be trafficked without ever leaving his or her hometown. While trafficking can occur to anyone in any situation, some factors have been known to contribute to a person’s vulnerability to being trafficked. These factors include poverty, the lack of an education or job opportunities, race, social caste, internally displaced people and refugees. Traffickers acquire their victims through numerous methods. They can be kidnapped and taken forcibly or they can be lured by false job offers in countries other than their own. In some cases, after victims have been willingly trafficked into other places based on false promises, their trafficker will charge them a previously undisclosed fine to cover the expenses of transporting them to another country. This subsequently creates a lifelong debt the victim must work off (through either commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor) to repay their trafficker. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking is now the world’s second most profitable criminal enterprise, sharing this position with the illegal arms trade, second only to the illegal drug trade. Many perceive trafficking as something that happens overseas or to foreign nationals, and/or as a crime that involves movement across state or national borders; the reality, however, is that trafficking affects both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens, and can occur within a victim’s own community (Polaris Project, 2014). Since 2012, all Florida counties have had at least one reported instance of human trafficking. Human trafficking can often go unnoticed, even by an individual interacting with a victim on a regular basis. Recognizing the signs is the first step in identifying potential victims. No single indicator What can schools do? * Promote general awareness on campus with other signs and posters. *Educate the community on the different types of human trafficking. *Create student-led PS!’s, plays, walks to raise awareness, and conduct trainings for community groups. *Developed a response protocol in collaboration with school district leadership. *Conduct annual teacher and staff trainings and student assemblies. *Plan and sponsor human trafficking awareness month activities in January. Teen Sex Trafficking Awareness PSA by Plant City High School Hillsborough County Public Schools is necessarily