The 2Cooltura project was created in 2006 for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the Department of Justice. Thanks to a generous renewal grant from the Department of Justice, SRF and Hispanic Communications Network have come together again to help Hispanic youth get out of and stay out of gangs.

The 2009-2010 phase of 2Cooltura will utilize the project’s already established branding but tailor the media, outreach, and website to two specific geographic locations and cultural populations: Montgomery, Maryland and Wake County, North Carolina.

The Latino gangs of Maryland are primarily composed of second-generation Latinos, while the Latino gangs of North Carolina are mostly first-generation immigrants. Localizing both projects will enable us to streamline the program message while also catering to the specificities of each community in order to have a more acute impact.

For a taste of what this year’s media products will look like, check out our original 2Cooltura PSA video with Grammy-nominated rock en espanol band La Secta Allstar:

According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) an estimated 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States each year. Victims are often lured into trafficking networks through false promises of good working conditions and high pay as domestic workers, factory and farm workers, nannies, waitresses, sales clerks, or models. Once in this country, many suffer extreme physical and mental abuse, including rape, sexual exploitation, torture, beatings, starvation, death threats, and threats to family members. It is believed that most victims who are trafficked are isolated and remain undetected by the public because 1) the strategies used by the perpetrators isolate victims and prevent them from coming forward, and 2) the public and the victim service providers have only recently become aware of this issue and may not be familiar with how to recognize or respond to trafficking victims.

To help stem human trafficking in the US, the Self Reliance Foundation is working with its media partner Hispanic Communications Network to design a Spanish-language public awareness campaign with support from the US Department of Justice – Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).

This high-impact multimedia campaign is launching in early November 2009. The campaign will pilot in the Washington, DC metro area. Produced in Spanish, this effort will support local human trafficking programs and services, and also help to increase detection and reporting of cases of human trafficking among the local Spanish-speaking population.

To complement the media campaign, SRF will collaborate with the Hispanic-serving community and faith-based partners to disseminate the campaign’s public education materials, and implement interpersonal grassroots outreach efforts to engage “Good Samaritan” members of the greater Hispanic community in the campaign. Our strategy two-pronged strategy is designed to increase the number of community members who understand how to identify human trafficking victims, are aware of the purpose and services of the local service providers, and ultimately are willing to work with the these groups to identify and also rescue and assist human trafficking victims.

To learn more about human trafficking please visit the US Department of Justice’s Online Description.