The School for Justice takes the victims of sex trafficking out of prostitution and into prosecution. Both a physical school and an education programme, the world’s first School for Justice opened on April 6, 2017.

The School for Justice is working with one of India’s most respected law universities training girls to become public prosecutors with power and determination to challenge India’s legal system from within – and prosecute the criminals who once owned them.

As we knew from research that India’s traditional press is reluctant to cover the topic of child prostitution for reasons including the views of the titles readership, advertising and editorial policy, we had to create a controversial statement to tackle India’s taboos around child prostitution – and at the same time engage the public and start the conversation via social media. A tangible solution to a deeply rooted problem, the school itself is the campaign.

On a conceptual level the campaign combined two things: hard data on the statistics of child prostitution in India with the emotional, human stories of the girls.

The campaign’s key messages were communicated through very shareable content, not only highlighting the injustice around child prostitution in a clear and rational way, but that also empowering the victims and turning them into heroes.

The focus was on telling the story on many different levels and throughout many dif-ferent channels over the course of the communication campaign, building the audi-ence with each piece of content, and always leading them to the website where they could actively ‘Support the School for Justice’, through donations, collaborations and sharing.

The content included a press conference introducing the School in Mumbai, a photo-graphic exhibition of the class of 2017 and their stories, a website, several campaign films, a PR campaign and a social media campaign.

The challenge was to get taboo topics around child prostitution openly discussed in Indian media and amongst the public.

The first responses from the national and international press have been favourable:

- Endorsements from UK’s Law Society, Geena Davis foundation and Malala Fund

- Covered by leading newspapers such as Mid-Day and Mumbai Mirror

- 34M+ local reach

Very promising is the reaction of the public across social media. For a topic that’s pre-viously been left unspoken, India got vocal. Very vocal:

- 1.1G people where reached through social media

- Levels of engagement are high (up to 28%)

- Right local audience is being reached; 91% of the Facebook fans is Indian

- 70% of people who joined the conversation is male

Of course, The School for Justice will be a real success when the first girls are public prosecutors and the criminals who once owned them behind bars.