20 Aug SAFE Summer Tour ☀️ Meet Seattle Frontline Partners
Together, We’re Making a Difference
This summer, we are taking a virtual road trip to see how your support fuels a statewide movement to end sex trafficking.
While many of us travel and vacation, thousands of victims are being moved and sold for sex every day and the psychological toll is devastating. Your support ensures that agencies across WA can provide prevention, intervention, and restoration. Today we’ll visit Seattle based Aurora Commons, OPS, BEST, and REST.
Safety on Aurora Avenue
Aurora Avenue has been known as a hub for street-based prostitution since the 1930s—and today, it’s gone viral on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, dubbed by outsiders as “the hottest track in America.”
But here, in the heart of this violence and exploitation, is Aurora Commons: a space that cultivates belonging, healing, and dignity.
Last year, 479 women walked through their doors seeking rest, safety, and the chance to imagine something more. Often called “The Emergency Room of the Avenue,” Aurora Commons responds to urgent needs with compassion offering advocacy, healthcare, housing referrals, and now, thanks to your support, peer mentors—a long-requested support. Mentors are uniquely qualified to guide others, having overcome exploitation, homelessness, and other adversities—and now walk alongside those just beginning that journey. Aurora Commons reminds us that even on the hardest streets, healing is possible—and no one has to walk alone.
Building Belonging and Bold Solutions
You can’t help but feel hopeful when you walk into OPS’s office and drop-in space. It is bright—filled with art, beauty, and stories of transformation. OPS, Organization for Prostitution Survivors, is known for building community among survivors whose trauma often tells them no one will understand. Executive Director Rekina shares how those who come seeking connection can grow in community and step into power. She speaks passionately about outreach:
“You can’t enter community if you don’t know it exists.”
In addition to their survivor services, OPS is relaunching their groundbreaking Men’s Accountability Program—a first-of-its-kind initiative that addresses demand by equipping men with the tools to stop buying sex. OPS reminds us that healing doesn’t happen in isolation—it takes connection, courage, and a community that makes space for both accountability and hope.
Changing Business as Usual
Trafficking is a business – networked, competitive, and dangerously profitable. If we as a community want to dismantle it, we must meet it where it operates. Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking (BEST) equips employers to do just that—by preventing exploitation and creating pathways to employment for survivors.
BEST’s ACTS model—Awareness, Consultation, Training, and Safe Jobs—helps businesses take clear, practical steps. From BEST Basics for every employee who interacts with the public to Flights to Freedom for airport workers to Inhospitable to Human Trafficking for the hospitality industry, BEST trains those most likely to encounter trafficking. With professionalism and precision, they’re inviting all of us to be part of the solution—turning the tools of business toward freedom.
You Deserve to Be Loved
As you enter REST, a bold, vibrant mural greets you with portraits of survivors, their eyes alive with strength and resolve. Above them, in sweeping letters, a message spans the wall: “You deserve to be loved.” It’s more than words. It is a truth every survivor deserves to believe. Inside, the warmth continues. Staff greet you with calm voices and open hearts. This is a place where survivors are met with dignity, not judgment.
Out on the streets, REST’s outreach teams offer hope—safety supplies, safety plans, and the kind of encouragement that says, you matter.
In the community, advocates walk beside survivors, helping them name their goals, believe in them again, and begin again.
Inside the emergency shelter, a woman closes a door behind her—maybe for the first time in years—with the safety of knowing no one can follow.
At REST, freedom, safety, and hope are more than words—they’re a way forward.
Want SAFE to visit you?
SAFE’s Chief Engagement Officer, Audrey Baedke, is meeting Community and Frontline Partners across the state. If you’d like to connect, book a coffee meeting or reach out directly at audrey@safeinwashington.com
206-492-4253.