In my experience, I’ve found that education is everything.
Now, you have to understand, education is more than just intellectual knowledge. It includes academia, intellect, common knowledge, and experience. All these things are wrapped up into the word “education”. When people send their children to school for an education, they don’t just want teachers to teach their children what 2+2 equals; they want a well-rounded, educated child. When we think about education, we think about empowerment. It’s a tool we use to change the world. We build schools in other countries, we evangelize, we teach; these are all things we use to empower and create change.
Without education, we lack an important aspect of empowerment. I say all this because this month is Dressember and I bet most of you don’t know what that means. I don’t blame you! I had no idea what it meant until I looked it up. If you’re curious, you can go to the Dressember webpage and learn all the stuffs. Let me take a moment to educate you with what I’ve learned. In short, you wear a dress or a tie every day for the month of December.
Why? To raise awareness and educate all the people. What are we educating them on? What the Dressember organization does. Now here is the long part. The Dressember organization partners with several other organizations to do three things: free victims, get justice for the victims, and help restore the victims. There are all victims of some form of sex-slavery. A lot of people use the term “human trafficking”, but in light of a recent discussion I had, I lean more toward the opinion that it is straight slavery. In 2017, Virginia ranked 15 in the nation in reported cases of human trafficking.
This year alone, there have been 98 cases reported in VA and 191 calls made about human trafficking cases. Two more quick facts from The Samaritan House: 1) the average age a teen enters sex trafficking in the United States is 12-14 and 2) Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world. We can’t do anything to help if we aren’t educated on the problem. This is my plea for you to seek out more information. We can’t all be Oliver Queen and go vigilante style across the US, taking down all the bad guys, BUT we do have a tool. We have education. If we can educate the public and tell them what’s going on, we can spark awareness and passion, two important ingredients in the recipe for change. This isn’t just something happening in another country; it’s happening in your backyard. It could happen to you. It’s not too late to wear a dress! It’s not too late to get educated and to start educating! It’s never too late, friends. Get educated and get to work. Y’all are gonna look bomb wearing dresses and the best part it, people are going to notice.
This is your opportunity to empower. Go for it!