18 Dec Demand is declining, victims are getting safety and hope, and survivors are moving forward into healthy lives!
Merry Christmas!
Welcome to our fantastic end-of-year update!
Whether this holiday season has been wonderful or challenging for you, we hope you’ll read-on and rejoice in all that is happening through your support of SAFE.
Below you’ll find encouraging news about how your support of SAFE is:
- reducing demand for commercial sex;
- helping victims get safety and healing; and
- serving survivors as they move on to healthy lives.
SAFE partner uses chat-bots to reduce demand!
In the past year, Seattle Against Slavery has used chat-bot technology to disrupt over 17,000 buyers in their attempts to purchase commercial sex online.
Buyers think they’re texting a girl to buy sex from, but get a response from a robot instead (they can’t tell). The text conversation continues until the buyer gets a message that their information has been reported to law enforcement.
Of course, every disruption in the buying process results in one less sex act committed against a victim (and massive amounts of data to share with law enforcement).
This amazing technology has caused buyers to be more wary of purchasing sex online, which has reduced demand and exploitation.
Rejoice!
Having someone to reach out to, can be a victim’s life-line.
This year, one of our partners used SAFE’s funds to hire an additional Community Advocate. An Advocate is like help in a body: always available for a call, always knowledgeable about how to connect a victim with needed services, always there to care.
Read on for how a Community Advocate at Mirror Ministries (in Tri-cities), faithfully served a victim in her community.
We were there for her. Because of you. We saw her. We didn’t just see a drug addict. We didn’t see a prostitute. We saw a girl. A girl who believed there was no hope for her. But we saw her and she decided to try to trust us. She tried. And sometimes she couldn’t, but we were still there for her.
Sandy, her name is Sandy. Sandy had been surrounded by toxic people all her life. First pimped out by her mom, and then local gangs. She really didn’t know how to trust someone. She had been in and out of the Foster system all her life. She was just counting the days until she was 18 and ‘free’ of the system. A Mirror Ministries Advocate had been keeping in touch with Sandy and building safe community for her to reach out to. We re-connected her to a foster mom that she had bonded with, and her Advocate walked alongside her as she chose to keep the baby she was pregnant with, to enroll in school to get her GED, and get her first apartment. Sandy even started going to a counselor for the first time in her life.
Any one of these steps would have been a miracle, but for Sandy to make such life changes, she needed that Advocate to support her and that community surrounding her. Sandy and her bouncing baby boy are thriving. She finally felt heard, she learned to trust. She just needed someone who was there for her. Thank you SAFE for being there for us, so we could be there for Sandy!
Rejoice!
Employers step forward to hire survivors
After victims get out of the life of sexual exploitation, they need opportunities for safe housing, healthy relationships, employment, and all of the other elements that lead to a healthy life.
SAFE is proud to support Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking (BEST) for their upstream work of bringing employers to the table who want to hire survivors.
Through their SafeJobs program, BEST trains employers and walks alongside survivors who have been placed in jobs to help the whole process go smoothly.
This program started just a few months ago, and already six employers have taken the SafeJobs training, and 69 survivors have been assisted with employment!
BEST hopes to serve many more employers and survivors in the coming year, and we’re delighted to be supporting this effort to help survivors take another step toward a healthy life.
Rejoice!
Your support of SAFE enables us to
fight sexual exploitation from all of these angles.
Rejoice!
THANK YOU
for reducing demand, helping victims and serving survivors.
From our team at SAFE and all those you’ve helped,
Merry Christmas!
Feel free to share this newsletter with a friend!
For more information or to support this important fight, visit: www.safeinwashington.com
If you have questions, please contact
safeinwashington@gmail.com