ZOE Australia believes that ‘Education’ is one of the key ways in which students of all ages can gain understanding and knowledge about the issues surrounding modern slavery and, in particular, child trafficking.
It is through a combination of informal learning at home, and formal learning during school time, that children develop personal and social skills. Even from a very young age, children interact with others - beginning to learn and explore issues such as fairness, respect and problem solving skills.
As children grow and are exposed to more complex human rights issues, education gives them opportunities to learn, challenge, problem-solve, influence and contribute to bringing about change, in powerful ways.
ZOE helps Australians to learn about the local and global issues involving the exploitation of children by building understanding, empathy, and a sense of shared responsibility.
Through education, ZOE seeks to equip and empower whole communities (parents, staff, teachers and students) to prevent child trafficking from occurring, by offering relevant curriculum resources and informative tool kits. We use our experience gained from working with child trafficking survivors along with current research and methodologies to work alongside leaders, educators and influencers to learn, assist, collaborate, develop and produce resources that will change attitudes and behaviours.
We have developed several (free) secondary school curriculums for teachers to use. We currently have a team of Australian teachers collaborating to write a primary school curriculum to cover important issues relating to slavery.
We see informal education (awareness) as an important way to engage with larger communities, or specific industries, by sharing information and resources that will equip them to be a voice for change, and to know how to effectively contribute to prevent (and end) child trafficking in their sphere. That’s why we developed our toolkits.
We believe that our toolkits can help bring awareness in industries such as: health, tourism, travel, sports, farming, clothing/fashion, hospitality and can be used by social-action groups.
For faith-based communities like churches, youth and children’s ministry, we have prayer-based guides which focus on God’s heart for the fatherless. Over time, we believe like-minded people will respond to the stories, information and the ‘heart’ behind ZOE’s work.
By using ZOE’s curriculums, toolkits and guides, individuals, groups and whole communities will better understand and change their actions towards others - whether directly or indirectly - igniting a movement that will bring about powerful change.
