RealStars participated at Angered high school’s Day of equal treatment on the 24th of March. The school celebrated 10 years of arranging this day, a very successful day with interesting discussions and meaningful meetings.
During this day, all students in their first year of studies at Angered high school had the opportunity to meet different organisations in Gothenburg that work with equal treatment in different ways. RealStars was there, as well as the female on-call service Terrafem, Men for Equality, Positiva Gruppen Väst, GUTS-meeting platform for girls, KRIS – kriminellas revansch i samhället, among others.
During the day, we met three different groups to talk about trafficking, prostitution and how the demand for sex purchases impacts human trafficking across the world. Most students had some knowledge on the issue from before, and were very interested when listening. They also asked a lot of questions.
How does the situation look in other countries? Why is it a criminal offence to purchase sex, but not to sell, in Sweden? Why is it that men purchase sex? Why is it so common that women and girls are involved in prostitution? How can it be legal to be a pimp in the Netherlands?
Many issues were raised and a lot of the students stayed behind to ask more, sign the petition and find out more about RealStars.
There were a lot of questions around the preventative work of RealStars: Exactly how do you work for stopping human trafficking? How do you know that what you do decrease sex purchasing?
RealStars are convinced that if people, both young and adults, are provided with more knowledge and information regarding how human trafficking and prostitution looks and are interrelated, more people would choose to not purchase sex in the future. With a decrease in the number of sex purchases, the market for human trafficking becomes smaller. Our work eliminates myths around prostitution, purchasers of sex and how the situation is in Sweden and the rest of Europe. We believe that using facts to show what the real world looks like, beyond Hollywood movies and fictive stories, is crucial for decreasing human trafficking.