January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. While we remain committed to dismantling these systems together, there are several organizations who devote themselves to this work year round and are leading the push to #EndTrafficking. See a few of these leaders below!
Launched in Orlando in 2009 by Rhonda Stapleton, Samaritan Village has maintained one of the largest recovery homes for female survivors of human trafficking for the last five years in Central Florida. Having a faith based, holistic, and trauma-informed program, their mission has gone further than providing a safe place for recovery. Additionally, they help each woman heal mentally, emotionally, and physically. In the fall of 2013, Samaritan Village relaunched their program to include, at the time, Florida’s only trauma-informed recovery programs furthering aiding female victims of human trafficking.
First known as Florida Abolitionist, United Abolitionists is now a national organization. They are a network of first responders to the human trafficking crisis, founded here in Orlando. Part of their mission is providing education and training to our community. Their training includes awareness, prevention and demand, focusing education on the root causes of the modern slave industry. One of the United Abolitionists main efforts is the Backpack Project which provides backpacks filled with important personal care items for victims of human trafficking, and has assisted victims in beginning their new life.
After her first experience with a Human Trafficking case in 1999, Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking (FCAHT) founder Anna Rodriguez, dedicated her time as a victim advocate with the Collier Country Sheriff’s office and was involved at the Immokalee Shelter for Abused Women as an Outreach Coordinator. Her passion for justice and support is evident in FCAHTs mission. FCAHT continues to provide help and services to victims of human trafficking. They have developed multiple outreach services throughout the state of Florida including coalition building, service delivery, training, referrals, as well as support groups.
Founded 10 years ago, The Lifeboat Project has been providing help, awareness and education to end human trafficking in Central Florida. Their primary objective is to help victims and survivors of human trafficking with lifelong support on their journeys to recovery. The project provides services to empower victims by providing counseling, housing, and a variety of other services to help them achieve healthy independence. To fight to prevent and educate on human trafficking, the Lifeboat Project has also created a mobile app, ACT, to educate junior high and high school students to recognize and protect themselves against human trafficking.
While The Children’s Campaign broadly fights to improve conditions for children and families in Florida, part of their work is to lobby state government for policy changes to protect victims of human trafficking. The campaign also developed the Open Doors Outreach Network, providing care services for sexually exploited and trafficked children and young adults throughout Florida. A major part of their care is having “survivor-mentors”, survivors of human trafficking offering their perspective to recent victims. These programs overlap as the lobbying efforts push for legislation to remove roadblocks of having criminal records that often come from being a victim of human trafficking.
Named after the North Star, the Polaris Project intends to target, disrupt, and prevent human trafficking before it even occurs with the broader goal of dismantling the systems that allow for trafficking to happen in the first place. They do this by gathering data on human trafficking globally to provide an evidence base for their policy recommendations and lobbying, track potential money laundering that could be used to fund human trafficking, provide criminal record relief for victims, and a variety of other endeavors to track and stop human trafficking.
NOTE: If you are a victim of human trafficking or if you have a tip about a potential trafficking situation, call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1-888-373-7888, or text 233733.