NATIONAL YOUTH SUMMIT

A live interactive webcast was held today by the National Youth Summit at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.. Several of our Freedom Partner student leaders participated in this most important webcast on Human Trafficking, Modern Day Slavery.

It was 150 years ago, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring slavery to be willfully wrong. The injustice of this hideous crime continues today. President Barack Obama on September 25, 2012 declared, "Our fight against human trafficking is one of the greatest human rights causes of our time."

Alison Stewart, a Peabody Award winning journalist and former host of TED radio hour, interviewed the distinguished panel of speakers including:

Lois Brown, Professor at Wesleyan University, is a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Award recipient and affiliated with the Harvard University DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research. Professor Brown is a renown lecturer on 19th century African American literature and abolitionist narratives.

Ken Morris Jr., Founder and President of the Frederick Douglass Foundation is a direct descendant of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Our Benedictine Academy Freedom Partner, continues the legacy of his great great great grandfather, Frederick Douglass, by leading a modern Abolitionist Movement in schools all across the country educating against human trafficking.

Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking of Persons, United States Department of State. "Ambassador Luis CdeBaca was appointed by President Obama in 2009 to coordinate U.S. government activities in the global fight against contemporary forms of slavery."

If you are interested in being part of the Abolition Movement and be a voice for the voiceless, go to
www.change.org/petitions/u-s-department-of-education-help-teach-kids-about-historical-and-modern-slavery and sign our petition. Benedictine Academy, along with nine other schools across the nation, wrote a New Proclamation of Freedom calling for education in our public and private school systems about the injustice of slavery against the human race.