Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Coleridge Minto
Kingston, Jamaica – The Ministry of Education, Youth and Information will begin full the roll-out of the Trafficking in Persons curriculum in schools when the 2016/17 academic year gets underway in September.
This follows the success of the pilot introduced in 49 institutions across the island in September 2015.
The curriculum will be implemented in over 500 primary and secondary institutions across the ministry’s six regions.
The curriculum, jointly developed with the National Task Force Against Trafficking in Persons, aims to promote greater awareness among students and teachers of human trafficking.
Trafficking in persons is defined as the trade of humans, most commonly for forced labor, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation by traffickers or other persons.
Assistant Chief Education Officer in the Core Curriculum Unit, Dr. Clover Hamilton-Flowers, said the Trafficking in Persons curriculum will be treated as support material in the new National Standards Curriculum.
She said the curriculum will be integrated in lessons in social studies, religious education, information and communications technology, physical education and sports, and history.
Teachers have been trained to help them understand the focus of the curriculum and the methodology they are supposed to use to incorporate it based on their context.
The Trafficking in Persons curriculum is geared towards helping persons see the issue as a global crime, as well as getting persons to identify means of preventing it and helping to reduce the vulnerability of persons, especially children and young people.
Hamilton-Flowers said the impact of the curriculum is dependent on the approach that teachers use to bring the topics across to students.
Director of Safety and Security in Schools, Assistant Superintendent of Police Coleridge Minto, tells JIS News that school resource officers are also being prepared “so that they, too, can help to promote the awareness of trafficking in persons and the dangers associated with it.”
He said sensitization sessions have also been held at several high schools, pointing out that “the Trafficking in Persons Unit in the Jamaica Constabulary Force gives us tremendous support… (as) they go into the schools and also do presentations.”
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