Dottie Laster Speaks to Students of The John Cooper School About Human Trafficking

Thursday, April 11, Dottie Laster will be the guest speaker for the Junior Statesmen of America, a nationwide political debate and awareness club, at the John Cooper School in Woodlands, Texas. The Junior Statesmen of America are divided into states, regions, and school chapters. There are conventions held during the school year, which bring all of the chapters together to debate current issues and hear speakers. It is run almost entirely by students. The John Cooper School sponsors are Anita Pilling (10^th grade ancient world history) and Peter Perretti (economics, AP US history).

The John Cooper School is an independent, non-sectarian, co-educational, college preparatory day school. The School’s mission is to provide a challenging education in a caring environment to a diverse group of select students, enabling them to become creative thinkers, responsible citizens and leaders, and lifetime learners……The Mission of the John Cooper School

Not only will Dottie Laster be bringing a day of insight into the world of human trafficking to students in all grade levels, but the school has been busy preparing various fundraising and awareness campaigns utilizing mainstream and social media to get their message to other students.

Event planner, Anna Merzi, secretary of the JSA Chapter at John Cooper School, says:

For funding: We will have a $5 dress down day and grade competitions for donations. The grade that brings in the most money will have their class president sing on stage with noise canceling headphones (they LOVE this). There is also a website that integrates with Facebook that you can give online donations to. We will send this to as many relatives and adults as we can along with information about the Bernardo Kohler Center. At our statewide JSA convention in April we have also put human trafficking in the pool to be represented at a political fair. We have given them BKC’s name in case they would like a speaker.

For raising awareness: I have decided that we need a mainstream approach to something that is rarely mentioned in society. First, we are utilizing Twitter. I will post facts on a twitter page I have created (@JCS_HTawareness) and at every Monday meeting I will ask a question about one of the facts posted earlier that week. Whoever can answer it will get a king size candy bar. Two minutes will then be dedicated to elaborating on that fact. We are also going to give the girls a list of places that are OK to get their nails done for prom, places that we know for sure are not using forced labor. We will then ask those salons to donate a percentage of the sale to BKC for giving them the extra business. Another one of our main events includes a showing of a Law and Order SVU episode that features human trafficking in our performing arts center. We will give the students Chic-Fil-A afterwards and they can go straight to one of our home baseball games.

Little ways to spread awareness will include getting posters put around the school, photocopying information sheets to put on the tables at our JSA meetings, as well as posting one-liner facts throughout the hallways. I have asked our librarian to get the October issue of More Magazine put in our library too, because it has a section on two human trafficking victims from Houston.

Getting involved in the issues of society within the context of school activities is a valuable way to teach students how to use their developing skills and imagination to bring awareness to things they may not have been exposed to or known about otherwise. The hope is to inspire them to become better and more responsible citizens, lending their resources to those less fortunate.

Human trafficking, and how it claims it’s victims, is one of the most critical messages our youth needs to hear in order to become aware of the tactics traffickers use; to lure them into dangerous situations, how they gain their trust, leading them into a world they never knew existed. Dottie Laster, CEO of Laster Global Consulting, will bring this lesson to the students throughout the day, speaking to different classes and grade levels.

Dottie Laster will speak about the grooming practices of traffickers, both on the victim level as well as the community level. While traffickers often prey upon vulnerable youth, there is an increase of young teens being lured by traffickers who are good students and come from stable family situations. The role of some traffickers is to gain the trust of not only the victim, but of other members of the family as well as those in the community, making it easier to prey upon a specific victim.

Dottie Laster is a nationally recognized expert in the field of human trafficking. She has been trained by the Department of Justice to train law enforcement on human trafficking. She has been the architect and leader of human trafficking task forces and coalitions in many cities in Texas and California. In her career she has been directly and indirectly responsible for the rescue and service of over 200 victims of trafficking in the United States. She is credentialed to practice immigration law through the Bernado Kohler Center.

Dottie Laster is available for speaking engagements, expert witness testimony, agency training, media consultant, and keynote for conferences.

To schedule Dottie for your next event, please contact:

ImaginePublicity PO Box 14946 Surfside Beach, SC 29587 Tel: 843.808.0859 Email: contact@imaginepublicity.com