Human trafficking is the buying and selling of human beings. Also known as Slavery, Human Trafficking is a crime against humanity. It involves an act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring or receiving a person trough a use of force, coercion or other means, for the purpose of exploiting them.

The most common form of trafficking in the United States is sexual exploitation. One of the largest forms of domestic sex trafficking in the U.S. and Canada involves traffickers who coerce children to enter the commercial sex industry trough the use of a variety of recruitment mechanisms such as online escort services, street-based prostitution and brothels.

The average age of first victimization and entry into this commercial sexual exploitation is 11-13 years old.

The sexual exploitation of children is a multi-billion dollar business worldwide, with startling levels of activity taking place here in North America. Though child pornography, prostitution and the trafficking of children for other sexual purposes are often perceived as activities only taking place in the developing world, law enforcement in the United States and Canada continue to battle these societal ills here at home. Their efforts, however, are hampered by a pervasive lack of public awareness to the prevalence of these illegal activities in our countries.

The topic of the child sex industry is not easy to talk about and in fact, for many adults, it's so heavy that it emotionally stuns them into inaction. A new strategy and mentality is needed to defeat the child sex trafficking industry – our youth will be widespread across our nations, broadcasting locally in the backyards of all who need to hear it.

The Backyard Broadcast youth leadership program was created as a competitive, yearlong commitment that brings together teens (rising juniors and seniors) from across North America to build a grassroots movement focused on combating the sexual exploitation of children throughout the United States and Canada. Inspired by the youth of the underground resistance movements that played such an impactful role in World War II by broadcasting the truth of the war, the youth of our generation are charged with a new broadcast: that perpetrators of terrible crimes against children have been getting away with lenient punishments for far too long.

Child Rescue Association of North America is a non-profit organization in Canada and the United States that exists to rescue children from the horrors of human trafficking through awareness campaigns, youth activism and law-enforcement training.

Child Rescue's inception can be attributed to the family history of one of the founders of the organization, Stephanie Larsen. Stephanie's mother put an end to 4 generations of Child Trafficking to pave way for a better life for her family. Stephanie and her husband Jess, his brother Nick and his wife Keshia, founded the Child Rescue Association of North America in 2010.

To read more about Stephanie and her mom's story, please visit our blog.

As a chapter based organization, we try our best to keep the money raised by each Broadcast Station pouring back into their local support goals, rather than coming back as administrative cost. Because of this, we need ongoing donor support to maintain our organization’s administration, staff, media and outreach.

The goal of funds raised by our youth chapters are to financially support a local response organization of their choosing who is working directly in the field combating Child Sexual Exploitation, and to fund a specialized local law-enforcement training day where their local police will get specific training on combating Human Sex Trafficking by Apogee Consulting.

Donations made to the Backyard Broadcast Headquarters go primarily to administration, staff, media, training and outreach. We use high-end media production, video, web and social media to grow our number of Youth Chapters, our main method for raising awareness for our issue. Our goal in our third year is to have over 200 youth chapters across Canada and the US.

Our staff works hard to provide training for all our youth to empower them as leaders and support them during their yearlong commitment. Donations made increase our resources and level of training, which we can pour back into our youth leaders.

All donations made, go to our parent company, Child Rescue Association of North America. The Backyard Broadcast is Child Rescue’s Youth Campaign. Child Rescue is a registered Charity and Tax Receipts are available.

If you are interested in supporting a specific Broadcast Station in your local area to meet their financial goals, please visit our Crowdrise page here and search for your local team.

The aim of the organization is to raise awareness about the issue of domestic sexual exploitation of children. We do this by awareness events, supporting local after care facilities and training local law enforcement on how to deal with the issue. We believe the Backyard Broadcast Youth are the key to passionate activism and are our driving force to make this issue better known, in the hopes that it will be eradicated.

Our primary concern is for the safety of our teens and organization members. We do not advocate or tolerate any illegal or dangerous behaviors. We do not allow any member of the youth campaign to work directly with any persons who are currently being trafficked or who are traffickers. All cases like this are referred to national hotlines, proper law enforcement and after care aid.

As a youth member, they learn exceptional leadership and organizational skills through our program. Their responsibilities include organizing and running awareness events and fundraising at those events to achieve their goals. The goals of each chapter consist of supporting a local after care provider and hiring local law enforcement training. Each chapter also learns how to engage and attract mainstream media to bring more recognition to the issue.

There will be comprehensive support from the headquarters on how achieve these goals with guidelines, training and walkthroughs for events. Chapters will be required to get all events approved by the Headquarters prior to taking place. We are also developing a leadership curriculum to help the leaders of the separate chapters be as successful as possible.

It is our intention that being involved with our cause will be a positive influence in the lives of our youth activists. Our desire is that the Backyard Broadcast will teach them to be empathetic to others, give back to their community and grow strong leadership skills. We also hope that being involved in a year long volunteer project will set them apart from their peers on future college applications and resumes.

The Backyard Broadcast youth leadership program is a competitive, yearlong commitment that brings together teens (rising juniors and seniors) from across North America to build a grassroots movement focused on combating the sexual exploitation of children throughout the United States and Canada. Inspired by the youth of the underground resistance movements that played such an impactful role in World War II by broadcasting the truth of the war, the youth of our generation are charged with a new broadcast: that perpetrators of terrible crimes against children have been getting away with lenient punishments for far too long.

The Child Rescue Association of North America is a non-profit organization in Canada and the United States that exists to rescue children from the horrors of human trafficking through awareness campaigns, youth activism and law-enforcement training. Click here to go to Child Rescue’s Media page (link) to find out more about our history or visit our website at www.childrescue.org

All media currently pertaining to the Backyard Broadcast or Child Rescue can be found here.