Two city high school English classes are appealing to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for help, the result of a months-long class project studying human trafficking and sexual slavery.
Since September, School Without Walls English teacher Meg Hurley said, her classes have been reading, writing and talking about human trafficking.
Using Patricia McCormick's novel Sold as a starting point, many of the 35 students in grades 10 through 12 responded strongly to the project. "They start getting protective, especially of their young female relatives," Hurley said.
"When I first read it, it made me angry," said Jerome Grisham, an 11th-grader. He was aware of the problem — young children being kidnapped or sold into forced prostitution — but not of its scope. He has two sisters, he said, and it's not hard to feel compassion.
For a different perspective, students in the class didn't have to look far.
Bhuwani Bhujel, a senior who moved to the U.S. from Nepal about eight months ago, had a personal connection to the topic. He said a girl from his neighborhood in Nepal had disappeared much the way the girl does in the book. "This crime cuts my heart because I am from Nepal," he wrote in his letter to Clinton. "What I want, please, is for you to take my letter seriously. I do believe you can find some solutions."
Hurley said she'd known the students were engaged, but she was moved to tears by their compassionate letters.
"When you think of the pain that a lot of these kids are in," she said, "they can really set that aside."