Ms Helen O'Shea:

In doing this project we have learned and developed new skills and have had many new experiences working at raising awareness and educating our entire school community, our local area and the country on human trafficking through the medium of the Young Social Innovator. We have used social media such as Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness of the topic, to educate people on human trafficking and to keep people informed of our work on this cause. Through reports, statistics, quotes, photography, videos and music, we have maintained interest, informed many minds and challenged many people to be more vigilant.

Throughout our work we have sought advice, information and guidance from the Department of Justice and Equality, the office of the European Anti-Trafficking Coordinator, the human trafficking investigation and co-ordination unit in An Garda Síochána and the anti-human-trafficking team in the HSE. We have worked with a number of non-governmental organisations such as Ruhama, Cois Tine, APT Ireland, the Immigrant Council of Ireland and the Sexual Violence Centre Cork as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. We have joined and promoted campaigns such as Turn off the Red Light, Don’t Close Your Eyes to Human Trafficking, Stop the Traffik, Blue Blindfold, Blue Heart and Purple Teardrop among others. We have circulated our report and recommendations to all interested parties, including our local TDs, Senator O’Donovan, Seán Kelly, MEP for Ireland South, interested NGOs, faith-based groups such as APT Ireland and MECPATH and local and national media. We are making our research and material available to various NGOs and interested bodies to help continue to raise awareness and educate people on this crime, which shames every one of us. We hope that our novel and comprehensive approach to the topic will in some way help the cause of eradicating this modern-day slavery not only in Ireland but worldwide.

We are a far more educated and aware group of young people on the reality of human trafficking in our country and worldwide. We are even more motivated and enthusiastic about doing something to make a difference. We have done things that we never thought possible, such as attending the meeting today and interviewing trafficking victims. We dealt with much media attention, particularly local print media, and Face Up magazine will be doing an article on our research and our recommendations. People in NGOs are taking our endeavours seriously and are willing to listen to our recommendations. In May we will meet with the Immigrant Council to discuss our work. We are following media coverage of the international conference entitled Stop the Traffick, which was held in Dublin last Thursday, which is the most recent report published.

We would like to help and be involved in new ventures such as the REACH campaign launched last week, the detection training for airport staff being offered by the Immigrant Council of Ireland, developing an educational app on trafficking and designing a short course on human trafficking/modern-day slavery for the new junior certificate curriculum. As William Wilberforce said: "You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know."