Title:

Link Together, Break the Chains

Written by: Andrea LaRocca, Mackenzie Drigo, and Myj Saintyl

Along with California and New York, Florida has some of the highest instances of
human trafficking in America. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Orange County has
some of the highest instances of human trafficking in Florida. Our civic engagement
project was to raise awareness about human tracking in Florida. This project focused on
raising awareness for this issue, as well as to striving for signatures with a petition letter
in support of The Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act. Contrary
to popular belief, human trafficking is a thriving industry and common human rights
issue in modern day society. Human Trafficking is a 150 billion dollar industry, and
Orange County has some of the most instances of human trafficking in Florida. Every
year, 60-80 thousand people are trafficked, most of who are unwillingly coerced or sold
into the industry. This project aims to raise awareness to the severity of human
trafficking, briefly engaging its audience and creating discourse by challenging their
perception of modern day slavery and trafficking. It is also our goal to invite UCF
students to sign a letter addressed to their congressional representatives in support of
The Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act.
What is human trafficking you may ask? Human Trafficking is a form of modern-
day slavery. This crime occurs when a trafficker uses force, fraud or coercion to control
another person for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts or soliciting labor or
services against his/her will (Defined by the National Human Trafficking Resource
Center). We joined together with UNICEF to help us strive for our goal. In order to do
that, we partnered up with uKNIGHTed for UNICEF (United Nations International
Childrens Educational Fund) and held several tabling events in the heart of campus to
attract the attention of the UCF community. Since we werent a registered student
organization, one of the biggest obstacles we faced was getting an approval for tabling
from OSI. uKNIGHTed for UNICEF is a UCF campus initiative dedicated to raise
awareness for global issues affecting children, and fund projects that UNICEF undertakes
to help save countless lives around the world who are forced into human trafficking. To
help fight, The Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act supports
family intervention and reunification services to help prevent trafficking and sexual
exploitation, and improves services for youth who have been victims of trafficking or
sexual exploitation. This act can help change the Basic Center Grant (BCG) in order to
mandate for local centers to provide shelters for runaways and homeless youth, as well
as for their families. Suicide prevention and trauma-informed services would be
available at these shelters to better aid victims. However, because we partnered with a
student organization, we didnt need the permission and simply scheduled our tabling
days under uKNIGHTed for UNICEFs name.
An aspect of this project that were very proud of is its name. After spending
countless hours mulling over different slogans, the perfect one just came to us: Link
together, break the chains. It was perfect for our campaign, because we were using
bright blue paper chains as a visual rhetoric while tabling. At our event, people who
were in support of The Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act got


to place their names on a link which would then be added to our paper chain. The
paper chain represented the plethora of people who were linking together to break the
chains of human trafficking. We ended the conversations by handing out brochures and
a simple bracelet showing that one person helped link, but also took a link out of the
human trafficking chain. The bracelet was made of rope with a simple blue bead
attached in the middle. The blue paper links, brochures, beads and t-shirts we wore
were all visual rhetoric aids in our campaign. UNICEF uses the same colors and by
keeping the same theme we were able to keep a continuation in out events.
Some of the things that we felt needed improvement were the brochures. We
figured that it would be very expensive to have them professionally done, so we decided
to simply print them out ourselves. The printers were having issue printing front and
back so we couldnt get all of our information down on one page, and so the brochure
didnt turn out as great as wed hoped. When we first got there, our brochures were all
messed up but we ended up figuring it out and stapling them together. We had to print
more but they printed backwards on each side. We ended up finally figuring it out the
last day and had colored brochures. It was rhetoric on planning how to do all of this
because we had to see the visual on how we messed up and how we could fix it.
Another problem we faced were the amount of computers/electronics available
for people to sign the letters. One laptop didnt have a strong enough charge, but we
quickly cam together and used our smartphones for people to sign off of. We learned
that we had to adjust and do the best we could at the time, as things will not always run
as they are planned.
If we could have done things differently, we would have had the brochures
professionally done and had more electronics devices for people to use. This is
something to keep in mind for the future that could make a campaign like this run more
smoothly. We did, however create a large impact by accomplishing our goal. We
achieved enough signatures to wrap the paper chain around the tent! We also did a lot
of social media outreach and had people sign the letters that way. Word of mouth was
another great way to tell people about of cause.
On March 29th, our group met up at the UCF library from 6-10p.m. discussing
our slogan and how we could make this campaign be successful. On April 1st, we spent 2
hours going shopping for construction paper, beads, paint, and rope for the visuals. We
spent about $32 total for a budget of about $35. We had to budget ourselves, so
unfortunately the brochures were not professionally laminated, but we did make them
in color later on. By April 3rd the first draft of the brochure was complete after about 3
hours of work and research. On April 4th, we all met up for another 3 hours to make the
brochures, bracelets, cutting for the paper chain, and posters. On April 6th, we had our
first official tabling at UCF and got many signatures from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. On April 11th, we
had our second tabling from 9 a.m. till 12:20 p.m. Lastly on April 21st, we met from 3
p.m. till 6pm working on our finalization of our achievements. We also made sure our
social media outreach continued on throughout the campaign to keep people talking
about the issue and encourage signatures.
Going into the project, we werent really sure what to expect in terms of how
many people were going to participate, however we felt that even if we got 50 students


to sign the petition letter, then we would consider that a job well done. Human
trafficking is such an important issue, however the number of people who are unaware
of this subject matter is astounding. A big component of the rhetoric for our project was
the paper chain. Since our slogan was Link together, break the chains, we figured that
by creating a paper chain with the names of the students who signed the petition letter
would show how we are unified (linked together) in the fight to break the chains of
human trafficking. A lot of passerbys really liked that concept because it was such a
clever play on words. Incorporating the paper chains into our project really helped us to
fully realize the importance of visual rhetoric because, not only did it make a statement,
but it also attracted the attention of the students. A lot of them would come over
because they were curious about the chain and wanted to know the concept behind it.
Usually tabling events are a hit or miss in terms of success. This mostly because
as the students are passing through the Union on their way to class, we only have a few
seconds to instantly grab their attention. As soon as their eyes fall on our booth, if we
dont display anything that will pique their interests, then they will not come over to
interact with us. So it was really important to display something that was both
attention-grabbing and thought-provoking, and the paper chain was both of those
things. Without it, we probably wouldnt have been able to raise nearly as many
signatures as we did. We used the color blue in our project on t-shirts, the paper chain,
brochures, and even bracelets. We thought that this would be appropriate because blue
is already UNICEFs official color. Other forms of rhetoric included our signs, which read,
Link together, break the chains and Stop human trafficking. We had bracelets with
one blue bead on them for the students to wear to signify a link that they were breaking
in the chain of human trafficking. The bracelet was made of rope to represent the
bondage of trafficking victims.
We also used visual rhetoric by having a brochure with information on how the
students could sign the petition using their own laptops. It contained information on
human trafficking as well as pictures and the name of UNICEFs End trafficking page on
twitter (@EndTraffick) to help get the word out there. We were rhetorically flexible to
metis of other peoples viewpoints. What was really interesting was the rhetorical
discourse that occurred through this project. A lot of people were surprisingly very
knowledgeable on this topic, and we actually learned a lot from the conversations that
we would have with different people. For example, while a student was signing the
petition letter, a young man came up and told us how if you have a metal spoon in your
luggage at the airport it is a sign that someone is a part of human trafficking. We used
rhetorical listening by listening to the audience on their views of human trafficking.
Our projected achieved the importance of what human trafficking is and how to
grab the attention of UCF students. The campaign project helped us achieve our
personal goal to encourage people take a stand, and try to become leaders to help
others in need. Our audience truly held the power during our campaign, but it was our
job to make sure they understood just how powerful their voices truly were.

Visit www.unicefusa.org to sign the petition to help pass this act to help stop human
trafficking before it starts.