High school students work to make world Free2Walk

Human traffickers don’t just have the police and other national and international law enforcement agencies fighting them and trying to undo all of their dastardly deeds.

Now, there is a team of St. Albert high school students who are working to wipe the plight of modern day slavery off of the face of the Earth. They are raising their voices and rallying the community behind them too.

The Social Justice League at Paul Kane High School has organized an awareness event called Free2Walk.

Corissa Tymafichuk and Andrea Payne, both Grade 10 students at the school, decided that this sort of thing is a plague that needs to be eradicated. They want more and more people to help them by becoming what they call “Backyard Abolitionists.”

“We first found out about human trafficking when we were in Grade 8,” Payne began. Both she and Tymafichuk were involved in the Social Justice club at Sir George Simpson Junior High School. “Neither of us had ever heard of it. It was completely shocking. We thought, ‘How is this happening in our world, let alone our country and in our backyards?’ It’s happening here.”

“It happens so often underneath the shadows,” Tymafichuk added. “We just wanted to bring a voice to the victims of human trafficking who are silenced. Oftentimes their identities are taken away from them.”

They looked into different projects that they could do to get involved. That’s when they first learned about the Not for Sale Campaign. It works to free everyone from bondage of all forms through business creation, supply chain evaluation and after-care aid. The American organization’s website (at www.notforsalecampaign.org) gave details about Free2Walk, an event that has taken place in numerous communities, mostly in the United States.

As far as these two go-getters were concerned, it was the smart decision to host a walk themselves.

“We thought that was a good idea. We can not only do it with our school but get the whole community involved.”

So far, they have more than 60 people right behind them as they plan to lead the charge on Saturday.

“We’re working for the betterment of others,” Tymafichuk said, mentioning that the walk might have been their idea but the school club is all about these kinds of issues. “We’re just focusing on making the world a better place.”

Their focus on this project has taken them to make presentations to various classes around the school. Students were spotted wearing orange ribbons on their wrists as symbols announcing their support for the cause.

Candice Jwaszko is the teacher advisor of the Social Justice League. It has been around for a few years now, arising as a compilation of the school’s Amnesty, Environment and Octagon Clubs. They’ve done food drives, served meals at Hope Mission, raised money to adopt gorilla habitat, cleaned up the Sturgeon River valley, and planted trees. They even switched out a water fountain at the school with a more energy efficient model as well.

The group recently participated in the 16th annual Alberta Envirothon, an environmental competition in Athabasca that tests Grade 9 to 12 students on several environment-related subjects. They’ve also been involved in roundtable discussions with the mayor regarding the environment.

“Anything that’s environmental, social… locally or globally,” Jwaszko said. She hasn’t seen anything like this come out of the group, however. She remarked on how impressed she is with the enthusiasm and drive of these two young leaders.

“It’s completely their initiative, their idea. They’ve been educating the school. They’ve been educating me, the community. It’s been something they’ve been completely passionate about. It really shows the depths of their compassion to care about something like that. It’s the buzz in the school.”

Tymafichuk and Payne also spoke to a staff meeting just to get the teachers on board as well. Jwaszko said that they were so moved by them that the committee behind the Taste of Kane event – a recent food event in the same line as the Taste of Edmonton – wanted all of the proceeds to go to Not For Sale. They brought in almost $2,000 in support, and all in under an hour. This already surpasses the organizers’ goal to raise $1,000.

In addition to all of the talks and posters and media calls, the two students also strove to connect with people through their sweet tooths and stomachs. Last Friday, they were selling cupcakes at $1 each to raise money. Customers who could say three facts about human trafficking, however, got a freebie.

The issue has even become a hot topic at other schools, Jwaszko continued, and posters for the event have been put up all over town.

The two students explain that there are more slaves today than ever before, a problem is estimated to affect 32 million people around the world. Even Edmonton and Calgary have had reported investigations into human trafficking in the past few years, some even occurring last month.

There’s more information about the issue and the event on a special webpage on the school’s website at www.pkhs.spschools.org/free2walk-tymafichuk-payne.