Sarah Vail, who teaches a family and consumer science course at the Edgartown School, cares a lot about her students … and about preventing human trafficking of girls. She combined the two last spring in an afterschool club, Sewing for Others, where the kids knew they would be making dresses that would go to Dress a Girl Around the World, a campaign of Hope 4 Women International. In this campaign, people sew dresses and send them to Hope 4 Women International, which distributes the garments to vulnerable girls around the world. Vail explains, “The whole idea is to protect them from human trafficking, because if there are girls running around without clothes, a predator will think, ‘Oh, nobody is going to notice if that child gets taken.’ But they think, if they have a nice new dress on, people are going to notice that these girls are gone.” Hope 4 Women International makes sure there are labels on the front of the dresses to broadcast the message that each girl is under their care, giving her added protection from those who would harm her, whether predators or traffickers.
The six seventh grade students — four girls and two boys who had been in Vail’s class before — signed up for the club, interested in making clothes for people other than themselves. Eager to contribute their efforts, all the 13-year-olds needed was a little refresher on how to use the sewing machine, a skill they had learned from Vail in fifth grade.
The students worked with fun, splashy fabric that Vail had bought. Having sewn all her life, learning from her mother as a child, and taking some design courses in college, Vail created a simple pattern for a small dress with elastic, so that it is adjustable and will fit girls from about five through 13 years old.
Vail first learned about the program a long time back. She explains, “Many years ago, somebody did it at the high school, where they made the dresses out of pillowcases. Dress a Girl has stopped doing it because a lot of the pillowcases were old and tattered. They have changed it, now requiring the dresses to be made out of new fabric.” Vail didn’t do anything with the idea until later, when a friend brought the project to her attention and encouraged Vail to pursue it, telling her, “This is right up your alley.” At the time Vail wasn’t teaching, but when she started in 2016, it was one of the first projects she did with her students. She has also done the project twice at the West Tisbury library.
The Dress a Girl Around the World website provides sobering statistics that they want people to share with others:
- Human trafficking is the second largest criminal enterprise in the world, after drug smuggling.
- A child is trafficked every 30 seconds.
- According to estimates, approximately 80 percent of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and 19 percent involves labor exploitation.
- The average age of a young woman being trafficked is 12 to 14 years old.
- 1.2 million children are brought into the slave trade each year.
Vail’s students are part of the organization’s global effort to fight the problem, joining others from all over the U.S., Canada, Uganda, the U.K., Philippines, Australia, Sweden, Costa Rica, South Africa, Germany, Norway, Japan, and Hong Kong. To date, Hope 4 Women International has delivered over 2 million dresses to 81 countries. They are distributed by ministries, missionaries, individuals, and humanitarian teams who carry the dresses into the countries. Hope 4 Kids International also leads teams to do the same.
Vail shares about her students’ savvy: “Some people at the school were a little cautious about telling the students that the project was to help prevent human trafficking. So I used the term ‘modern-day slavery,’ and one of the girls said to me, ‘My mom says it’s for human trafficking. Is that right?’ And I said, ‘Yes, it is.’”
Speaking about her dedication to fighting this abuse, Vail says that, being a mother of two girls, it’s her worst nightmare. For her, doing something that could help that cause is worthwhile. “So many people don’t understand that it’s also in this country. It’s huge. Even on Cape Cod, there have been arrests,” Vale continues. She says it’s important for people to have this conversation and to realize the average age of kids who are taken is 12 to 14 years old — and that it is prevalent in this country, not just in third-world ones.
For more information about Dress a Girl Around the World, see dressagirlaroundtheworld.com.
