342:  Peer Educators to Build Safe Communities

Jamie Macintosh joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as the two discuss how peer education is transforming human trafficking prevention in schools through the Safe Community Safe Kids Program.

Jamie Macintosh

Jamie Macintosh joined the Global Center for Women and Justice as the program coordinator for the Samueli Foundation Grant: Safe Community, Safe Kids Program. She is an alumnus of Vanguard University and has a single-subject teaching credential in social science and a college counseling certificate from UCLA. She has extensive experience working as a middle and high school teacher, a school counselor, and an administrator in both private and public education. Passionate about outreach, Jamie has traveled with students on trips to Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America.

Key Points

The Safe Community Safe Kids Program launched in 2024 through a grant from the Samueli Foundation to combat human trafficking among minors in Orange County. The program provides free, expert-led prevention education and trauma-informed training for both students and educators, meeting California’s legal requirements for human trafficking education. College students from Vanguard University are trained as peer educators, completing over 40 hours of specialized training to deliver two-part presentations in local classrooms. Peer educators provide instruction on topics like online safety, healthy relationships, red flags, and how to recognize and resist trafficking tactics. Using anonymous sticky notes, the program collects feedback from students, helping them voice their questions and reflections in a safe way. The curriculum leverages the power of peer-to-peer influence, offering relevant language, relatable examples, and stronger engagement from students. Students are taught to assess unsafe situations and are empowered to become active protectors in their peer groups, reinforcing the concept of community-based safety. Real-world scenarios and emotional manipulation tactics used by traffickers are addressed head-on, including peer recruitment and exploitation through social networks. The program aims to be replicable across communities and includes long-term plans for sustainability through school district partnerships and community support. Jamie emphasizes the importance of building resilience in students so they can recognize risk, respond appropriately, and protect themselves and others. Future goals include doubling the program’s reach and building consistent delivery systems to maintain impact as peer educators graduate and new ones are trained.

Resources

Jamie Macintosh on LinkedIn Live2Free Short film

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast, brought to you by Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice, right here in Orange County, California. This is episode number 342. Peer educators to build safe communities.

[00:00:20] And I’m Dr. Sandie Morgan. This is the show where we equip you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in the fight to end human trafficking. I’m very glad to welcome Jamie Macintosh to the show.

[00:00:38] Jamie Macintosh joined the Global Center for Women in Justice as the program coordinator for the Samueli Foundation Grant. Safe Community, Safe Kids Program. She is an alumnus of Vanguard University and has a single subject teaching credential in social science and a college counseling certificate from UCLA.

[00:01:06] Sandie Morgan: She has extensive experience working as a middle and high school teacher, a school counselor and administrator In private and public education passionate about outreach. Jamie has traveled with students on trips to Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast Jamie.

[00:01:34] Jamie Macintosh: Thank you for having me here today Dr. Morgan,

[00:01:37] Sandie Morgan: I am so excited that you joined the Global Center for Women I Justice when we received the Safe Community, safe Kids Sam Welly Foundation grant, and I have to tell our listeners that when we interviewed you, ’cause listeners get to be kind of on the inside track, when we interviewed you, our committee was particularly impressed that you had served as a vice principal.

[00:02:13] What does a vice principal do that’s different than other teachers and administrators?

[00:02:20] Jamie Macintosh: As a vice principal, you really support the students. I think it’s a little bit more hands on with them and you’re really starting to learn more about them, especially students who are maybe having trouble in school.

[00:02:34] And so there’s a lot of times that they’re in your office and you’re talking about what’s happening in the classroom, but you’re really getting down to the root of what’s going on in their lives.

[00:02:43] Sandie Morgan: Somebody on the interview team said to me, oh wow, that’s great. She’s a problem solver, and so we knew you were the right one for the job. Tell us a little bit about what the Safe Community Safe Kids Program is doing.

[00:03:05] Jamie Macintosh: So in June, 2024, the Global Center for Women in Justice at Vanguard University, received a generous grant from the Samueli Foundation, and this was to launch the Safe Community Safe Kids Program. So this initiative just aims to combat the severe threat of human trafficking to minors in Orange County by providing expert led prevention, education, and trauma informed training to both students and educators.

[00:03:33] And all of this is done at no cost to the schools or to the teachers. So the Safe Community, Safe Kids builds upon the success of the Global Center for Women in  Justice and live to free. Who have educated over 11,000 students over the past decade, but with this grant, we’re able to launch and educate even more students.

[00:03:54]Sandie Morgan: So the Safe Community Safe Kids Program is going to also meet the California state requirements for seventh and ninth grade, is what I understand.

[00:04:11] Sandie Morgan: So when you’re talking about doing this for the schools for free, why is that so important?

[00:04:19] Jamie Macintosh: In 2016, California enacted the California Health Youth Act, which requires California public school districts to provide specific requirements for instruction on human trafficking to students in grades seven through 12, at least once in middle school and once in high school. So our program aligns with that.

[00:04:39] As well as assembly bill 1227, which still focuses on addressing human trafficking in California schools. So our program trains Vanguard University College students, which we call peer educators, to visit the classrooms to provide this crucial education on human trafficking, as well as online safety and healthy relationships.

[00:05:02] Sandie Morgan: And they adapted that a little later on, and I believe now every student is required in seventh grade and in ninth grade to have some kind of prevention training. Around human trafficking that includes both sex and labor trafficking. And the idea that it requires this training, but it doesn’t have specifics as far as whose training you have to use, has created, a need in our schools for support.

[00:05:42] So how does our program, and I’m just gonna be like promoting this because we wanna share this, out. We want other organizations to learn from what we’ve learned because we do believe prevention is super important. So how do we meet those guidelines?

[00:06:05] Jamie Macintosh: I think as a teacher, a lot of times you’re asked to teach something and you don’t get the full training, and a lot of times it’s maybe a sentence or two in your curriculum, but we know it’s so much deeper, and so we are able to go into the schools with our extensive knowledge and training and to take this from the teacher and to really teach the students this important information.

[00:06:29] Sandie Morgan: So you’re speaking not just from the perspective as the program coordinator, but your own experience as a teacher in the classroom?

[00:06:40] Jamie Macintosh: Yes, and I know one of the things that we’ve faced in implementing our program are teachers who are reserved about having guest speakers come into their classroom, especially about something as important as this.

[00:06:54] I had a teacher that said, you know, I’m a little hesitant. Because I really have had people come in and they haven’t done a great job, and my time is so valuable. So what are you doing that’s different?

[00:07:07] Sandie Morgan: Ooh, I like that question

[00:07:08] Jamie Macintosh: And we, we were able to say, we use a research based curriculum. Our students have been trained for 40 hours.

[00:07:17] They go through continuous education and they are really subject matter experts on this.

[00:07:23] Sandie Morgan: Wow.

[00:07:24] 40 hours of training. Okay, so the idea of, well, let me go back. there’s so much to unpack in what you just said. That’s so exciting. So let’s go back. You started in June and it’s only March. So we’re three quarters of the way through year one.

[00:07:47] Let’s get kind of a glimpse of the progress that you’ve made.

[00:07:52] Jamie Macintosh: So our students, they started school at the end of August, and that’s when we started our interviews and then we went right into training. We hired 10 peer educators, and like I said, they completed those 40 hours of training in addition to going to their classes, doing their homework, doing their assignments.

[00:08:13] Then we launched into the schools. We conducted our first school visit in October, and since then we’ve partnered with 16 educators across 13 school sites. We’ve taught 52 lessons and have trained 794 students in that time.

[00:08:30] Sandie Morgan: Can I just round that off to 800?

[00:08:32] Jamie Macintosh: Yes.

[00:08:32] Sandie Morgan: Oh my gosh, that’s so amazing. Here’s the thing, when I first came to Orange County, I got invited into the classroom and I realized right away, cause I was already a grandma, that students were rolling their eyes and

[00:08:54] I realized they were just like my own kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re supposed to tell me to be careful. You’re supposed to remind me to look both ways when I cross the street, but why is it so important that we use peer educators?

[00:09:14] Jamie Macintosh: Our peer educators are saying the same things that we’re seeing, but the students aren’t hearing it when it comes from us.

[00:09:21] When they hear it from someone who’s close in age to them. Our peer educators are current undergraduate students. It just is something that hits a little bit more closer to home,

[00:09:32] Sandie Morgan: They look more like this kids. They use the same vernacular when they’re talking about video games. They’ve actually played those video games.

[00:09:44] So there’s just more resonance with, uh, a peer educator and a near peer recipient of that training. I love that you’ve already reached almost 800 students. What kind of feedback have you received?

[00:10:03] Jamie Macintosh: It has been so positive from the teachers, from the administrators down to the students. Um, something that you’ll notice when you see my desk is it’s just filled with sticky notes.

[00:10:15] Oh my gosh.

[00:10:16] Sandie Morgan: You are, you look like you dig through trash cans looking for sticky notes. They are everywhere and every color I just, we we, we’ll take a picture, we’ll put it on the website. This is the sticky note

[00:10:31] Jamie Macintosh: Yes.

[00:10:31] And that was something that after a couple of visits, we realized that we wanted more feedback from the students and we wanted them to have a safe.

[00:10:39] Space to ask the questions that maybe they couldn’t ask in front of the class. So at the end of our first lesson, we ask the students on a sticky note that we pass out to them to either write something they found interesting, something they learned that day, or maybe a question that they have, and we go through each and every one of them.

[00:10:59] We go back in lesson two and answer each of those questions. So it allows students to really share what’s on their heart, and sometimes that’s scary to do it in front of a class

[00:11:10] Sandie Morgan: and they don’t have to put their name on

[00:11:12] Jamie Macintosh: It’s completely anonymous.

[00:11:14] Sandie Morgan: Wow. So what are you gonna do with all those stickynotes

[00:11:17] Jamie Macintosh: Yeah, I think about that all the time.

[00:11:20] I know I need to do something. I save each and every one of them, and a lot of them say how much of a great impact our program had on them, what they’ve learned, signs that they didn’t realize were there before. Some red flags they’ve seen in past relationships and what they wanna do to protect others and themselves.

[00:11:40] Sandie Morgan: what kind of lessons have you learned along the way?

[00:11:45] Jamie Macintosh: I think after each presentation, it’s always a time of reflection. What are ways that we can reach students better? And so we’ve changed in different things that we’ve said. We’ve changed in ways that we can deliver our content. we’ve learned to kind of refine our skills each and every time.

[00:12:06] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. So one of the challenges that you and I have talked about is how to make sure what we bring is supplementing and helpful to the teacher. How does that translate here?

[00:12:26] Jamie Macintosh: One of the things that we’re really focused on is that we can replicate this model so that it is not based on just specific peer educators, but it’s something that is gonna continue after they graduate.

[00:12:40] So for our students, they’re able to go into schools between one and four years, and then they go off into their careers. And so what is a way that we can continue to go into schools and teach students as we get new peer educators every year to every few years. And so I think one of the things that we’ve struggled with is finding ways to be consistent as well as having each student add their voice to the presentation.

[00:13:10] Sandie Morgan: Okay. So how has the peer education model impacted student learning and engagement? And let’s talk about that from the perspective of a seventh grader or ninth grader that we’re targeting.

[00:13:27] Jamie Macintosh: So our peer educators are really the core of our program. I was just in a conference a few weeks ago where they were talking about peer recruitment, and that is using peers to recruit particularly vulnerable people into trafficking situations. And so that can be commonly referred to as peer to peer recruitment or recruitment by peers.

[00:13:51] Sandie Morgan: So wait a minute. So we’re trying to do prevention with peer-to-peer, but the traffickers are using peers as well?

[00:13:59] Jamie Macintosh: Yes. And so that’s what we’re seeing, that they’re using these various tactics and strategies like exploitation of trust, social influences, deceptive promises, manipulation of vulnerability, or even just control.

[00:14:13] Sandie Morgan: Okay, let’s break that down. So we wanna build trust and we talk about helping young people identify trusted adults, now that same element is being used against these kiddos. Explain that.

[00:14:34] Jamie Macintosh: So, a child might feel more open to listening to someone who is near or close to their age, and there is a little bit more trust in that openness, not thinking that that person is trying to do something bad to them.

[00:14:49] And so that we see that the human traffickers are using these other children who are near an age to try to bring these children into recruitment. And so we go in using near age students to then teach as well because we see that they’re more open to hearing from someone who’s close or somewhat close to their age.

[00:15:10] Sandie Morgan: Okay. So we’re building trust. What about social influence?

[00:15:15] Jamie Macintosh: So we see that traffickers can also often use social networks, including friends, acquaintances, or even online to make trafficking situations appear normal or even desirable. One of the things that our peer educators talk about is, is there someone online who’s messaging you, maybe a friend that you’ve never met?

[00:15:38] How many hands we see raised when we ask that question in the classrooms, that there’s this trust of thinking that the person on the other side of the computer is someone who’s close in their age, and it may not be.

[00:15:50] Sandie Morgan: So there is a sense that. Our ninth graders and seventh graders may be too trusting of the people on the screen.

[00:16:00] Jamie Macintosh: Yes. And not only the people on the screen, but other peers at their school where they may think, oh, that person’s just asking me for a picture because they like me. Not realizing that person might be sharing that picture with others.

[00:16:15] Sandie Morgan: That’s scary. So you also said that they use strategies that include deceptive promises. That sounds just like the definition of human trafficking where they use fraud.

[00:16:29] Jamie Macintosh: Yes. And that’s one of the things that we show the students in our presentation. We bring up Maslow’s hierarchy and our students go through. These are things that each of us need. We need food and we need shelter to feel safe.

[00:16:44] And if you’re lacking one of those things, oftentimes a trafficker will try to hit that vulnerable spot to make you feel like that you’re feeling loved or feel secure.

[00:16:57] Sandie Morgan: Two more elements you mentioned. Manipulation of vulnerability, and that falls as long as we’re using the human trafficking definition, that falls into the category of coercion.

[00:17:12] Jamie Macintosh: Yes. So we see that peer recruiters can use tactics like emotional manipulation, establishing trust and friendship before gradually introducing the idea of trafficking. My colleague Ruthie Hanchett, made this really great short film that was in partnership with teens in the Santa Ana Unified School district that shows this boyfriend asking his girlfriend to do sexual acts in exchange for money for their relationship.

[00:17:42] Sandie Morgan: Wow. And traffickers control, what is that for a seventh grader?

[00:17:49] Jamie Macintosh: So a seventh grader may feel like they’re compelled to continue recruiting for that person to avoid retaliation or harm to themselves or loved ones.

[00:18:01] we see that traffickers can often threaten or expose that person to harm, or even they would say, “I’m gonna share these things that you did with others. I’m gonna share these photos with your peers, and everyone’s gonna know what you did.”

[00:18:15] Unless,

[00:18:17] Sandie Morgan: unless, and then we move into more exploitative language and even extortion. And How do you and the peer educators try to equip these kids so that they know how to find help?

[00:18:38] Jamie Macintosh: I think we want to. Our first school is always preventative education that students can recognize the signs of human trafficking and these warning signs. But we also wanna aim to break these cycles by teaching young people how to recognize and avoid peer recruitment tactics in the future.

[00:18:58] Sandie Morgan: Yes. Okay. We can put a link to the short film.

[00:19:04] I, it’s a very revealing film when you understand that it was made, the story was created by young people for other young people, and this is an area as an educator in a university.

[00:19:23] And a longtime member of our anti-human trafficking community here in Orange County, nationally, internationally, we want to empower the kids, we wanna protect them. Sometimes we practically wanna build fences around them, but we also have to understand how important it is for us to build their resilience, their ability to identify risk and respond. And that’s kind of strengths based approach to prevention is critical and a key element in the Safe Community, Safe Kids Project.

[00:20:14] We’re almost through year one. What kind of improvement or adaptations are you looking towards for year two?

[00:20:27] Jamie Macintosh: In year two, we’re gonna double our reach. And so that means that we’re gonna double our team of peer educators as well as needing to double our partnerships. And so I think our district partnerships are our greatest asset to sustainability of our program.

[00:20:44] And so as we move forward, we want schools to welcome us into each and every classroom, and I think that would help us be consistent in delivering this education and guarantees that all students receive this important information.

[00:21:02] Sandie Morgan: So when you are in a classroom, give me an example of what the students are teaching and how they communicate.

[00:21:15] What kind of scenarios do they offer?

[00:21:18] Jamie Macintosh: Well, our program is done over two one hour presentations, and it goes over topics such as. What is human trafficking? How it happens, who is involved and affected? What are different red flags to look for? We teach students to recognize their inner voice and how to listen to it.

[00:21:41] They’re able to know what their rights, what their personal boundaries are. We say “no” is a complete sentence. the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Finding who a trusted adult could be and how to take a stand. I think it’s really important that students learn this information for themselves, but they’re also learning this information to stand up for others around them.

[00:22:06] Sandie Morgan: Let’s talk about that a little more because I feel really strongly that safe communities starts in their peer community, and I’ve been very distressed. We just finished in Ensure Justice and learning from some of the teachers, from some of the social workers, child welfare that students in the same class would pass on an inappropriate picture instead of making sure they’re the ones who stop it and that.

[00:22:47] That ability to stand up for your peers. How, how do you take that to the classroom and make it an actionable, learning outcome from the peer educators with the kids?

[00:23:05] Jamie Macintosh: One of the things we talk about with the students in the presentations is how much power that they have to stop things when things are wrong.

[00:23:16] And so one of the things we ask students to do is to recognize who they can be and that they have the power now to say “no” to things that are wrong. Our peer educators, they go in and they give examples, and that’s one of the great things about the presentation, is they can show them ways that they can get out of a bad situation and give them examples.

[00:23:42] In our second lesson, we teach students the ABCs, where they’re learning to assess a bad situation. They’re learning how to recognize what’s going on, and then we give them ways to get out of that situation and find a safe environment.

[00:24:00] Sandie Morgan: So give me an example, assume that I am online and I’m trying to connect to a young person and I’m trying to reach out to everybody in that class, but my profile is fake.

[00:24:18] I’m not really 14 years old. So what do you tell a student when everybody else is excited that there’s this new, girl new guy in class and one student is suspicious, how does one student change everything for the others?

[00:24:41] Jamie Macintosh: When a student learns to speak up, I think that has more power than they recognize.

[00:24:48] And so when they are able to say, there’s something wrong here. I don’t think this is what’s going on, other peers start to listen to that and it just takes one student to do that.

[00:24:59] Sandie Morgan: I love the power of one student. That’s so important. So, let’s go back to looking at this program from the long term impact and sustainability.

[00:25:15] I am thrilled that we’re almost at the end of year one and we have such good results, and I attribute a lot of that to your leadership, your organization, and your commitment to the peer educators. They always turn to you for guidance and support when they’re out in the community, but after year three.

[00:25:43] How are we planning right now to be able to continue to deliver, to continue the sustainability?

[00:25:51] Jamie Macintosh: Thank you for your kind words. I think it’s taken a really great team who have built into the peer educators, and looking at sustainability.

[00:26:00] We want this program to continue past our grant funding, and I think district partnerships would be our greatest asset if we were to establish sustainable partnerships with school districts through MOUs,

[00:26:14] That would enable us to educate every student in the district through classroom visits. So ideally what that would look like would be districts would contribute maybe a nominal fee to access the curriculum, and then the peer educators could then deliver the content.

[00:26:29] Sandie Morgan: I think the, the magic sauce, like people talk about is the chemistry that happens when I’ve observed peer educators with a classroom full of 14, 15, 16 year olds and the energy as they’re raising their hands or just shouting out. No, don’t do that. I, I think we underestimate the value of young people keeping each other safe and how we integrate that into our day-to-day education.

[00:27:10] So looking for ways to keep this going. The sustainability it’s constantly as the executive director for the Global Center for Women and Justice, it’s constantly in my mind and I am, I’m also very aware of school districts that don’t have resources to fund some of those long term objectives. Have you thought about

[00:27:42] How the communities can begin to be part of the sustainability. What, what ways could we engage parents, other schools? Any ideas for that?

[00:27:57] Jamie Macintosh: I think as the name of our program implies, it takes a safe community to have safe kids. And so it’s all of us coming together and working together. I’ve had parents, I’ve had churches say, could we pull our money together to have this program at our youth group?

[00:28:14] And so it’s just finding other ways to get this education out.

[00:28:19] Sandie Morgan: Aand that’s where I feel really encouraged.

[00:28:22] At first, people said, well, why can’t you bring this to our school? I was like, because our grant is Orange County.

[00:28:31] And so they said, so what if we, and they began to build a strategy for their own program. So let’s take a moment and think about, what could someone do to build a program like this in their county, assuming that they don’t have Vanguard University next door? Do you have ideas?

[00:29:00] Jamie Macintosh: I think our goal is that this program would be widely used throughout the nation, and it’s not just here in Orange County.

[00:29:09] We would love for other schools or other groups of people to adopt this peer education model and send peers to teach about human trafficking into schools or youth groups or other programs. And so I think it’s beginnin to, to contact the global center. I think it could be seeing what we’re doing and trying to replicate it.

[00:29:33] Sandie Morgan: I totally agree. It is replicatable and there are ways for you to learn more about peer education, and so I encourage you to follow us, follow what Jamie Macintosh is doing in leading this program here.

[00:29:53] If you have the opportunity to join us at any of our seminars, our Ensure Justice, listen to future broadcasts on this podcast.

[00:30:07] We want this to multiply, and in many ways it reminds me of the, the little, what’s the weed that has all the little seeds? What, what do we call that?

[00:30:20] Jamie Macintosh: Oh, the dandelion.

[00:30:22] Sandie Morgan: In many ways it reminds me of a dandelion, and as you listen to this podcast, I would want those seeds to find their way to your community because building safe communities with our kids is the future of how we keep our kids safe.

[00:30:39]  Building resilience in a digital world where kids can recognize the risk, the exploiters, and determine to be the one to step up and protect their friends, their co-students. I am so excited about this episode, Jamie, and I wanna thank you for doing this interview.

[00:31:10] Jamie Macintosh: Thank you, Dr. Morgan for having me on today and for just your support in this program and I’m excited to see where it continues to go and how it continues to grow and how others can have this program and grow it in their community too.

[00:31:24] Sandie Morgan: All right, we’ll look forward to that.

[00:31:27]  Listeners, I encourage you to take the next step by visiting our website at endinghumantrafficking.org. If you haven’t visited the site before, be sure to subscribe so you can stay up to date with everything we share.

[00:31:52] You can access show notes from today’s episode and peruse the past episodes. We’d also love your help in growing this podcast. If you know someone who would benefit from this conversation. Invite them to subscribe and join our community. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

[00:32:19] Thank you for listening. I’ll be back in two weeks.