Arts Aftercare: Fighting Trafficking Through Art

on 4th Dec 2012

“I learned that girls as young as 5 years old were being freed from forced prostitution, and that slavery still existed in the world. There’s nothing I wanted to see changed in the world more than that, so my immediate response was, What can an artist do to stop human trafficking?”

So says Curtis Romjue, founder of Arts Aftercare, in the introduction to this moving short documentary. On a trip to the Philippines, the young Hawaiian artist had been shocked by seeing widespread prostitution, which often involved child prostitutes.

After pondering what he could do to help improve the situation, Romjue realised that through the power of art, women who had escaped the prostitution industry could be helped to express their emotions and deal with the potentially traumatic experiences that they had undergone.

He and his organisation developed a toolkit that could be used throughout the world to help victims of trafficking. Its huge success is testament to the power of creativity – and a triumph of optimism.