Pre-work and planning

Objective: To engage club in community partnership to serve as the “hub” in a “hub and spoke” model 

Step 1: Gain club buy-in

Invite relevant speakers to increase awareness of situation on local and global problem

• Governmental Agencies such as the Department of Social Services and local Law Enforcement

• Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) focused on the problem such as: the RAGAS Coordinator or Ambassador for your area, local anti-trafficking and survivor services programs

• Survivors: Work with local programs to identify survivors who are willing and able to share their story. Work with your club to identify and engage local stakeholders

Step 2. Identify and gain buy-in from a key (non-Rotarian) partner to serve as Community Co-chair or Champion 

This ensures that the program is bigger than just a Rotary project. 

As an example, the Rotary Club of Warrenton, Virginia (District 7610) partnered with their county Sheriff, Bob Mosier, who worked with the International Justice Mission on human trafficking in South East Asia. He was an ideal partner and champion as he had first-hand knowledge to share and credibility to lend to the project in the community.

Step 3. Identify Stakeholders

Create a spreadsheet with contact information and category type (Law Enforcement, Survivor Services, Media, Education, Community Member, etc.) to be easily searchable when you need it.

Phase 1: Raise awareness through community conversations

Objective: To opening the conversation with the community and raise public awareness of human trafficking / modern slavery at a local level. To develop a common language and provide possible solutions to safeguard their community, such as prevention education in the schools and community training.

Schedule multiple Community Conversations starting in the local Middle Schools

• The reason for this focus is that the average age a minor will be approached by a potential trafficker is 12 years old, and middle school is where they are at age 12

• Middle schools also usually have smaller auditoriums – so it looks more full than the same number in a larger auditorium

• Engaging the schools in the process gets their buy-in early and helps set the stage for a curriculum in schools later.

Provide space for informational booths from stakeholders to provide additional local resources and information beyond what was shared from the podium

Plan the line up of speakers. The purpose is to raise awareness around a very alarming topic. The natural instinct is fight or flight, so plan to go easy on the audience. No more than 1.5 to 2 hours, including Q&A, or you will likely lose your audience. Provide solutions so the audience can get engaged and not leave feeling helpless.

Example structure:

• Welcome by hosting school principal (or someone connected to the school)

• Rotary Club chair acts as MC to keep things moving and introduces, gently wraps-up who may exceed time, etc.

• Local law enforcement perspective of local human trafficking / modern slavery situation. 

• Federal or Regional Law Enforcement agent to share regional and/ or local cases and perspective (videos of newsreels helps make it real as the audience may be familiar with the cases)

• A survivor or survivor’s family member provide their story to “humanize it” and provide a concrete example

• Description of a possible education-based solution (ideally the eventual curriculum partner who will provide curriculum in schools, or is very familiar with the proposed curriculum to build community support early)

• Survivor services solution to provide hope for attendees (local victim/ survivor advocacy / support group)

• Questions & Answers – attendees will time need to process what they just heard, so allow lots of time for Q&A

• Wrap-up from Rotary MC with a call to action that includes:

  • Follow Facebook Group to share information

  • Request audience write Letters to the Editor about trafficking and the event to encourage attendance at future ones

  • Volunteer opportunities (handing out posters, inviting people to the next Community Conversation)

  • Hang restroom posters to raise awareness and help potential victims access assistance

  • Education opportunities

  • Ask them to invite your club to other speaking opportunities (churches, businesses, etc.)

• Audience will want to help – give them concrete avenues to engage locally.

Marketing / Advertising

Create a Facebook or other social media page as the “Hub” to share local / regional HT information

• Use Facebook Live to live stream one of the conversations for those who couldn’t attend, and / or for promotional purposes

• If possible, have one of those videos professionally filmed and edited and pin it on the FB page

• Create the event invitation in the FB page

• Add co-hosts such as stakeholders, partners, speakers, Rotary club etc. 

• Encourage everyone to share and invite attendees

Leverage local media (Newspaper, radio, magazine, television, online, etc.)

• Write Press Releases / Media Advisories (with pictures if available) to make it easy for media outlets to put the event in community calendars, write preview stories, and write wrap-up stories after the event

Create simple posters that can be easily emailed and printed by citizens who will help post (request Rotarian and community help through the FB page)

Send Letters to the Editor for a few weeks before the event as well as share at local community / business events to let them know it is coming.

Phase 2: Stakeholder meetings

These would be hosted at the same time as the Community Conversations in Phase 1.

Rotary Club members (“hub”) leverage their influence to invite all identified stakeholders (“spokes”) to meetings.

• Rotarians facilitate meetings as the “hub”

• Have Rotary members serve as scribes and note takers – facilitators can’t do both and attendees won’t take as good of notes as someone who’s sole job is to do it (bring note pads, pens, flip charts, markers and easel)

• Provide nametags and tent cards if possible (bring materials and markers)

• Invite media to attend and cover all of the meetings to keep community awareness high

• Meetings can be as frequent as needed for each community, but at least quarterly is recommended to keep momentum

• Always plan to send an agenda in advance and minutes at the end along with a contact list to all attendees so they have record to refer to.

First meeting: Meet & Greet to introduce the organizations, and what they specifically do in the Human Trafficking / Modern Slavery area and network the organizations

• Introduce stakeholders – many won’t know each other

• Determine who is doing what – look for overlap (thus partnership opportunities)

• Identify gaps in services (such as education, awareness, affordable housing, transportation, etc.) – don’t solve them yet as this meeting is a comradery building meeting – the gaps will identify who is missing from the stakeholder meeting for next time

• At the end, ask who is missing that needs to be involved? Get their contact info and invite them!

Second meeting: Introduce everyone again and start the process of Community Assessment focused on community awareness and prevention needs:

• What are the gaps in services that need to be filled from their perspective?

• Does anyone already fill them? ▪ If not, who should?

• What could that look like?

• At the end, ask who is missing that needs to be involved? Get their contact info and invite them!

Third meeting: Break into service areas such as first responders, education, survivor services, service organizations, NGOs, etc., depending on attendees.

• Have everyone introduce themselves and then pose a question or two that they can discuss such as:

  • What Gaps do you see that hinder your ability to provide the necessary services to prevent human trafficking?

  • What/ Who could fill those gaps?

• At the end, ask who is missing that needs to be involved? Get their contact info and invite them!

Fourth meeting: Start formulating an action plan, based on what you have gathered from the first three meetings - break into committees to solve the identified problems!

• Committees can be broken by type of problem, service sector, etc. Don’t over think it, let the group of smart, capable professionals dig in and get going.

• Your job as facilitator is to be sure each committee has a lead and focus.

• Have them develop an action plan around solving their project during the first half of the meeting

• The second half of the meeting is for each committee to report out their solution to the problem they were working on.

  • Open it for discussion and ideas

  • Assign each group to continue working on it and send a developed action plan at least one week before the next meeting so the facilitator can compile them for everyone to read.

Fifth meeting and beyond: Continue working through the action plans, reporting back to the Rotary Club Board with any needs Rotary can step in to fill. This is a community problem that the community can solve as long as the hub and spokes are working together!

There is no way RAGAS can list or evaluate all the community awareness materials available. So the following is just a list of suggestions to help you get started.

1. The Blue Campaign is a US government initiative to educate the public, law enforcement, and other industry partners to recognize the indicators of human trafficking, and how to appropriately respond to possible cases. 

   • Among other resources, the Blue Campaign hosts a series of awareness-raising videos, and promotes the National Human Trafficking Awareness Day (aka #WearBlueDay)

2. The web site of the US Department of Defense includes a variety of brochures, posters, and infographics.

3. The Office on Trafficking in Persons under the US Department of Health and Human Services has published a five-week awareness-raising program called Connecting the Dots. This was released to support the National Human Trafficking Prevention Month (Jan 2025) but it is appropriate for other uses as well.

4. The Slavery Footprint survey is an interactive way to help people understand their personal impact on exploitation globally.