Born2Fly Project to Stop Child Trafficking Expands to More Countries

Diana Scimone : Apr 15, 2011
Born 2 Fly

"What if we could help parents and teachers equip their young children and teenagers to stand up to traffickers and their lies?" -Diana Scimone

(Orlando, FL)—Each year more than a million children are lured into slavery because they don't know the deceptive tactics that traffickers use. Bought and sold like animals, some of these children are just 4 years old.

"What if we could warn these kids in age-appropriate ways about the lies that traffickers tell?" asks Diana Scimone, director of The Born2Fly Project (B2F) to stop child trafficking (www.born2fly.org). "What if we could help parents and teachers equip their young children and teenagers to stand up to traffickers and their lies?"

The rate of child trafficking would plummet.

That's the goal of The B2F Project—to reach kids before the traffickers do. Scimone is a journalist who has traveled to more than 40 countries including Sudan, Zimbabwe, Thailand, China, and India. She founded Born to Fly International to respond to the critical needs she saw among the world's children. Today B2F's sole focus is working to stop child trafficking in the U.S. and around the world.

For the past 5 years Scimone and a team of writers, educators, illustrators, and designers have prepared a trafficking-awareness program that's now being tested in the Dominican Republic by women who are members of a community health team.

The 6-week B2F program includes a 70-page curriculum with material for young children and teenagers, a 150-page wordless book (wordless so that it doesn't have to be translated into thousands of languages), games, activities, anti-trafficking posters, and more.

Later this spring the B2F anti-trafficking program will also be tested in Bulgaria at a summer camp. "Child trafficking is rampant in eastern Europe," says Scimone, "so this is a strategic opportunity to reach kids before the traffickers do."

The materials will also be test-taught at a safe house in northern Thailand where even young children know about the "black van" that goes around neighborhoods stealing children.

In the Philippines, an organization working with schools to set up an anti-trafficking awareness program plans to test B2F at two schools in urban and rural areas. Organizations in other countries are also considering testing including Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Guatemala, Kenya, the US, and elsewhere.

Once the test phase is complete, Scimone will make the materials available in print and online to schools, community organizations, places of worship, and other groups all over the world.

"I love what Ambassador Luis CdeBaca said," Scimone explains, referring to the director of the US State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking. "He said, 'Human traffickers have just a little more information than victims do.'

"If we can turn that around," Scimone says, "and make sure kids have just a little more information than traffickers do, we can prevent millions of children from ever enduring the nightmare of being sold into slavery. That's the goal of the B2F program."

For more information, see www.born2fly.org or Scimone's blog, www.dianascimone.com where she writes about the fight to stop the traffic.