IA Students at the Governor’s Mansion win Zone 34 Interact Club Award

We are very proud to announce that the IA Interact Club led by Dr. Maloney won the Zone 24 Interact Club Award for their work with the GRACE Commission. Seigel Whitaker, Lakshana Ramanan, and Sree Hariharan tell us about:

As members of the officer team of Interact Club at Innovation Academy, we had the privilege of meeting Governor Brian Kemp, First Lady Marty Kemp, and the members of the GRACE Commission to discuss our work combating human trafficking in Georgia.  

Human trafficking is one of the most prominent issues in today’s world. As teenagers, we are one of the most susceptible demographics to human trafficking, with the average age of a sex trafficked child being 13-14 years old. So, with our Interact Club, we decided to help protect our peers by raising awareness. In June of 2022, we attended the International Rotary Convention in Houston, Texas and presented our project in which we created digital games to spread knowledge about this issue. To continue with our journey, the students at Innovation Academy hosted a Human Trafficking Summit at our school with the Rotary Club of Alpharetta and learned so much from professionals in the field. The three of us also had the opportunity to speak on the panel at the summit and share our experiences and voice our ideas. 

During our time at the Governor’s Mansion, we reconnected with the Section Chief of the Human Trafficking Prosecution Division of the Office of the Attorney General, Hannah Palmquist, as well as the Director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Michael Register. Other members of the GRACE Commission included Jan Jones, the Speaker Pro Tempore of the Georgia House of Representatives, Chris Carr, the Georgia Attorney General, and Donna Hyland, the CEO of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. 

Coming from the Commission meeting, we realized there was a need to prevent trafficking through education. With this in mind, we’ve taken the first steps toward creating a Junior GRACE Commission, and we cannot wait to see where this takes us. 

We are so proud to have been able to represent our school and our community as we work together to solve this critical issue. We’d like to thank Dave McCleary, the Vice Chair of the Rotary Action Group Against Slavery, for his work connecting us to the GRACE commission, as well as every member of the commission itself. Their words and work in this fight inspire us to follow in their footsteps and end human trafficking in Georgia and around the world. 

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