With school in high gear, students are busy connecting with old friends and making new ones, too.
Problem is, a lot of this socializing is online, leaving children vulnerable to sexual predators who may be disguising their intentions.
According to the Ministry of Children and Family Development, one in five kids between the age of 10 and 17 have been sexually solicited online - and 75% don't tell a parent or an adult.
To fill the gap in resources and information, Coquitlam-based Children of the Street Society is once again visiting local schools to make children aware of how to protect themselves so they don't become victims of sexual exploitation.
The issue is increasingly a concern as children as young as 10 start putting information about themselves on social media websites - information that can be used against them by clever predators.
"We're basically teaching them how to be safe online," says program co-ordinator Meghan Toal, who with five COS facilitators, hopes to conduct 600 workshops across the province for 28,000 students, including workshops in School District 43.
This year, the facilitators are introducing a new tool in their arsenal to inform students about the many forms of sexual exploitation and how it often starts on the internet. They have created videos for two age groups: One is a story geared to middle school students about a boy and a girl who "over-share" or put too much information about themselves on their YouTube vlog while the other is geared to high school students about the downward spiral of a boy or girl who fall prey to the gangster lifestyle.
"We are really dealing with the screen generation," said Toal, explaining that feedback from students showed storytelling with video was a good way to get information across.
The facilitators spent the summer talking to people in the sex trade as well as street-involved youth, members of the Vancouver Police Department vice squad and youth workers to put together credible stories.
In the videos geared to the younger age group, "Carter" and "Julia" list their school, age, likes and dislikes on a vlog and find it attracts some unwanted attention. Toal said the video will be used to delve into the issue of what's appropriate to put online and how to set personal boundaries as well as other adolescent concerns such as fitting in and being respectful to one another.
The video sets the stage for what Toal calls a "foundational conversation" with middle school students about the warning signs of sexual exploitation, noting that it's not too early to discuss these difficult topics because the highest risk ages are 13 and 14.
For the older age group, the video docudrama tackles the issues of sexual exploitation, gang recruitment and prostitution, and illustrates the warning signs of recruitment - the offering of gifts and attention to a young person, often by a slightly older man, while simultaneously cutting off connections from friends and family.
The 90-minute workshop also discusses the risks of putting too much private information or nude photos on the internet, which can hurt employment opportunities, attract predators and, if it's pornography, result in legal charges.
Activities such as "sexting," sharing intimate information over cellphones, and LG (little girl) parties, where middle-school girls are invited to parties organized by older teens, are also discussed, Toal said, and while the topics are difficult, the Grade 9 to 12 students may be more likely to heed the warnings because they are delivered by young adults who are up to date on the issues and the trends.
Ian Jung, one of the facilitators who portrays a gang member in the "Julia" video, says it's also important to tackle the issue of gangs and gang recruitment head on. Youth need to look honestly at the lifestyle so they understand that gang life is not all parties, cool clothes and fast-cars, he said. It's dangerous and can lead to a life of low-level crime or worse - involvement in the drug trade and even death, and plenty of examples can be ripped from today's news headlines.
"It's all about myth busting," Jung said. "There's a lot of misconceptions about what it [the gang life] means."
But the workshops are not all about the bad news. Students are given resources, emails and web addresses for place to go to get more information or report to the authorities and time is spent discussing how to help people leave exploitative relationships.
It's a timely message and schools and parent advisory councils can book these free workshops to their schools; bookings can be made for both 2011 and 2012.
For more information, visit www.childrenofthestreet.com.
Think, then dress
With Halloween just a dozen nights away, the Children of the Street Society is urging parents to think twice about their children's costumes and discourage the use of clothing and accessories that promote prostitution and the gang lifestyle
"The message is simple: It's not socially acceptable to dress up as a pimp, gangster or sex trade worker this Halloween," Diane Sowden, executive director of the Children of the Street Society, said in a press release. The organization, which teaches young people about sexual exploitation, says dressing as a "pimp" or a "ho" glamorizes the destructive gang lifestyle.
