Empower 2019 – Improving our Collective Response

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Empower 2019! Another great conference thanks to all the amazing advocates, agencies and organizations that participated and special thanks to our esteemed presenters Andy Soper and Kris McNeil from Measurable Change, Luke Hassevoort LMSW, Housing Manager from Ruth Ellis Center and Nate Knapper, Special Agent – Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).  Here’s a snapshoot of some of the feedback we received:

Some of the comments we received from participants about the event….

We look forward to planning more educational and training events in 2020.  Watch our newsletter and check our calendar for conferences or events near you!

 

 

2019 Round Table Event in Troy

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On January 29, 2019 over 130 people, representing dozens of organizations, gathered together for MAPs annual 2019 Round Table event held at the Troy Community Center. The Round Table, which was co-sponsored by the Salvation Army, is for experienced advocates, professionals, and service providers who are active in addressing human trafficking in Michigan. The objective of this forum is to increase collaboration and effectiveness in SE Michigan by identifying barriers, building relationships, and strengthening partnerships.

The event included a delicious buffet dinner followed by presentations from:

  • Andy Soper of Measurable Change , Measurable Change is working with state & local partners to combat Human Trafficking by developing a Baseline & Readiness Roadmap. Through this comprehensive assessment, they plan to provide Michigan with a framework for interdisciplinary cooperation & data collection, victim service provision and context-specific education.
  • Michael Glennon Supervisor of Southeast Michigan Trafficking and Exploitation Crimes Task Force (SEMTEC) gave update on the progress of the task force which consists of members from the FBI, Michigan State Police, Washtenaw County Sheriff, Detroit Police, Dearborn Police, Highland Park Police, Southfield Police, Livonia Police, Roseville Police, Huron Twp. Police, Canton Police and Romulus Police Department. The SEMTEC is a top performing Task Force in the country.
  • Kelly Carter Assistant Attorney General and Michigan Human Trafficking Commission Chair provided updates on Michigan legislation and commission.
  • Elizabeth Moon Carter from the Salvation Army shared about the collaborative grant and the Salvation Army human trafficking initiative.

The event provided time for networking, sharing of resources, and providing feedback useful for planning future events.

 

Empower 2018 – Finding Hope Through Trauma-Informed Care

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Providing the best care to adult and children survivors of human trafficking

On May 31, 2018, more than 140 service providers, law enforcement officials, church groups, health care providers, volunteers and lay-persons gathered together at the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School in Auburn Hills for a six-hour training discussing the importance of trauma-informed care practices when working with survivors of human trafficking.

Attendees heard from experts in the field, including Dr. Michelle Munro-Kramer from the University of Michigan’s School of Nursing; Maggie Dunn, founder of the House of Providence in Detroit and licensed therapist; Alice Johnson, author, consultant, survivor, and found of Sister Survivors; and Edee Franklin, founder of Sanctum House. Attendees also had the privilege to hear from a brave young man who told his story of being labor trafficked since the age of 7 years old.

Here are some highlights from each speaker!

Trauma-Informed Care by Dr. Michelle Munro-Kramer

SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) defines Trauma as “a result from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”

According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, Complex Trauma is defined as “typically involving exposure to sequential or simultaneous occurrences of maltreatment (including psychological maltreatment, neglect, physical and sexual abuse, and domestic violence). Exposure to these initial traumatic experiences – and the resulting emotional dysregulation and the loss of safety, direction, and the ability to detect or respond to danger cues – often sets off a change of events leading to subsequent or repeated trauma exposure in adolescence and adulthood.”

Michelle’s presentation discussed the importance and need for trauma-informed care practices when providing care to survivors of trauma. Below are some highlights from her talk:

Based on SAMHSA’s definition, traumatic exposures involve the 3 E’s:

  • Events -> Events and circumstances cause trauma
  • Experience of the Event(s) -> An individual’s experience of the event determines whether it is traumatic.

Affected by HOW, WHEN, WHERE, and HOW OFTEN

  • Effects -> Effects of trauma include adverse physical, social, emotional, or spiritual consequences.

*Trauma can affect people of every race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender, psychosocial background and geographic region. Trauma often affects an individual’s resources to cope, and often ignite the “fight, flight, or freeze” reaction at the time of the event(s).

Based on SAMHSA’s definition, a trauma-informed approach includes the 4 R’s:

Trauma-informed practices consider the adverse affects that trauma can have on an individual’s physical and mental health and well-being. In order for events, organizations, and individuals to incorporate trauma-informed practices into their work, they must follow the 4 R’s.

  1. Realize the widespread impact of trauma and understand the potential paths for recovery.
  2. Recognize signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system.
  3. Respond by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices.
  4. Seek to actively Resist Re-traumatization.

*It’s important to recognize that re-traumatization is a risk whenever individuals who have experienced trauma are exposed to their trauma histories without sufficient tools, support, and safety to manage emotional behavioral and physical reactions.

SAMHSA’s Six Key Principles of Trauma-Informed Approach:

We encourage you to take a trauma-informed approach in the work you do.

  1. Safety – Providers must be responsive and adapt the environment to establish and maintain physical and emotional safety.
  2. Trustworthiness and Transparency – Operations and decisions related to the client will be conducted with transparency with the goal of establishing and maintaining trust.
  3. Peer Support – Survivors of trauma will be encouraged to practice mutual self-help in order to build a setting of trust and collaboration.
  4. Collaboration and Mutuality – Ensure the provider-client relationship is collaborative and then build beyond this relationship.
  5. Power, Voice and Choice – The importance of resilience and the power of individuals’ strengths and experiences will be affirmed and promoted. Likewise, organizations need to reinforce the importance of staff autonomy, choice, and sense of control.
  6. Cultural, Historical, and Gender Issues – To understand how trauma affects an individual, you must first understand the identities of the individual including racial, ethnic, and sexual identity; the cultural needs of individual; as well as the intersectionality of identities, and historical trauma.

*Text from this portion was provided in a handout that Dr. Munro-Kramer provided, which was put together by the CASCAID collaborative – a group from the University of Michigan School of Nursing.

Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) by Maggie Dunn

Maggie Dunn, founder of House of Providence in Detroit, is a licensed therapist with a passion for empowering and caring for the orphaned child. Together with her husband Jason, they operate House of Providence – a residential facility that provides a therapeutic and familial environment for minors who are languishing without the prospect of a permanent family of their own.

HOP also provides vital intervention and support services that afford vulnerable foster youth in the State of Michigan with safety emotionally, mentally and physically. Because of the direct care and individual attention given, program residents eventually stabilize and are then able to receive trauma focused therapy where they process their difficult journey and begin to heal.

One evidenced-based practice that HOP employs in their continuum of care is Trust-Based Relational Intervention. During the Empower 2018 Event, Maggie presented on the tenets of how she employs TBRI:

Trust-Based Relational Intervention is:

  • Earning trust
  • Empowering the survivor
    • When you don’t have options, you make bad choices. The HOP team walks through the healing process with each resident, providing hope
  • Connecting with the survivor
What is trauma?
  • An injury to either psyche, body, or relationship.
  • Wounds – makes you more sensitive, and informs all responses to external stimuli
  • Neuromuscle memory – brain sensitivity
  • Acute versus prolonged – limbic system
Aging out of foster care is the number one precursor for victims of human trafficking. The correlation between foster care and human trafficking is large, and it’s due to no one looking for the youth in foster care.
Restoring resiliency
Neuroplasticity

Trauma cuts the youths chronological age in half, and they operate with a trauma brain. They’re prone to type 2 diabetes, with vitamin deficiency. The youth also come to us in an educational, medical, dental, and mental health crisis. They’re also in a relational crisis as they are alone on the planet. They’re come to us angry, mistrusting, no clothing, and with lice and bedbugs.

When there is a lack of options- poor decisions are made. We operate with a Trust-Based Intervention:

  • Empowering by meeting physical and immediate needs.
  • Connecting by meeting attachment needs
  • Correcting principles, by disarming fear based behaviors.
  • Felt safety – the child determines this
  • Calming limbic system
  • Meet needs and offer external regulation
Our program: How do we do this, practically?
  • Red level: stabilization (bonding with staff, assessment period, coping skill identification, full observation, etc.)
  • Yellow: trauma processing/deinstitutionalization, mentor matching, learning their value, a timeline of life, etc.
  • Green: community reintegration, RAD training, integration into a family, always pushing toward caregivers.
It only takes one adult to change the trajectory of an entire life!

For more information about the House of Providence visit http://thehofp.org. For information on foster care in Michigan and the state of the orphaned child, click HERE. And for more information on Trust-Based Relational Intervention and how to best employ these practices, click HERE.

5 Things Survivors Wish Service Providers Knew about their Trauma by Alice Johnson

 

Providing Survivor Care by Edee Franklin

Edee Franklin, the founder of Sanctum House, earned her Master’s Degree in Education from Wayne State University and was a special education teacher for several years.

At the Empower 2018 event, Edee spoke about her passion for empowering survivors of human trafficking, which ultimately fueled her dream of opening Santum House.

Sanctum House is a 2-year residential safe home for trafficked survivors. The program focuses on physical, psychological, emotional, education, and spiritual healing for adult women survivors. Staff at Sanctum House pride themselves on providing holistic services, anchored in trauma-informed care best practices. The program provides the life skills needed for program residents to achieve success and independent living.

For more information on Sanctum House, visit https://www.sanctumhouse.org.

About MAP’s Annual Empower Event:

The Empower conference is an annual MAP event that addresses high-level challenges and opportunities pertaining to human trafficking in Michigan. Empower is designed to equip experts and experienced community advocates who are working towards collaborative solutions.

To get involved with MAP and/or the Empower event, email info@map-mi.org.

 

Consumers Vote – 3 Things You Can Do

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“Cocoa has been an important ingredient in global cultures and history, evolving over the years, and continues to be enjoyed today in thousands of different forms”1. Especially during holidays like Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Sweetest Day it is hard to resist retailer’s alluring displays of holiday-branded chocolates. But before you reach for that dazzling foiled wrapped chocolate, I encourage you to consider using your consumer dollars to vote (via your purchase) for companies that are moving forward with more ethical practices. Here are 3 things you can do to make a difference:

1. Learn Why You Should Care

We should be concerned because the processes behind the farming and trading of the most important commodities, such as cocoa, can be very ugly. Major concerns include the use of child labor, exposure of workers to dangerous pesticides, and other abuses including human trafficking. The Ivory Coast in Africa produces nearly half of the world’s cocoa, and it is a well-known fact that Africa’s cocoa industry has a history of human rights problems. “Achieving success in the fight against child labor in the cocoa sector is a shared responsibility that requires the time and talent of all interested parties, including cocoa-growing communities, governments in cocoa producing nations, the chocolate and cocoa industry, and chocolate-consuming nations around the world”1 (that includes me and you!). Download MAP’s Ethical Shopping Guide  or check out worldcocoafoundation.org and/or follow the bean to the bar process to learn more.

2. Look for Fairtrade and Ethical Sourcing

Fairtrade works to help make farming more sustainable in countries such as Ivory Coast and Ghana. Look for the Fairtrade symbol on products before you buy.  Unfortunately Fairtrade certification may be cost prohibitive for small farmers, so some organizations choose to work directly with farm co-ops to ensure there are no abuses hidden within their supply chains. These companies usually are transparent about their practices and include their commitment on their labels. I recently stopped at the grocery store and scanned the isles of chocolate Easter candy.  It was disheartening that as I picked up chocolate bunny after bunny I was finding no mention about company practices.  Alas though, I did find ONE bunny that was ethically sourced!  Check out this label on the only chocolate bunny who can have a clear conscious in this giant row of candy…


3. Develop New Buying Habits

Fairtrade products are sometimes more costly and hard to find, but each year, more and more Fairtrade certified and ethically sourced products appear on shelves across the country. Consumers are becoming more interested in learning where our favorite foods come from and how they are grown. Start with one product and begin to read labels and research company policies AND practices (do they say what they do AND then do what they say?). Try to find an ethically sourced product, then commit that brand to your shopping list.  Here are some tips and stores that I have found along my search.

  • Trader Joe’s, sells some Fairtrade coffee and teas, also a 1.25 ounce Dark Chocolate Espresso Baton for 99¢
  • Aldi’s carries Fairtrade products that are competitively priced. Check out their Fairtrade coffee and UTZ certified chocolate products.
  • IKEA provides extensive information on their company policies and practices to protect people and the planet  I love their towels and UTZ certified coffee and chocolate!
  • Divine Chocolate – Holiday Specific Treats (Divine is often available in major grocery stores)
  • Check out Starbucks, they have a goal to have 100% ethically sourced cocoa by 2020 for all Starbucks cocoa based beverages!
  • You can often find ethically sourced products at Costco; they offer many organic and Fairtrade products
  • I found a nice Fairtrade t-shirt at REI; they also carry Patagonia brand clothing for men and women.
  • Read our blog “Becoming a Part of the Solution: First Steps to Ethical Shopping” to learn more!

Consumers VOTE with their buying dollars. We can see that some companies are starting to listen; and even better, some companies are starting to ACT.  Dollar by dollar, WE ARE making a difference!

— Kathy Maitland – Director Michigan Abolitionist Project

For more information check out betterworldshopper.org or 

1 worldcocoafoundation.org

What’s Your Justice Style?

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The issue of human trafficking is complex and often overwhelming. Many feel moved to action, but then wonder; “how might I best plug into the cause“? Well there is a helpful Online Tool, to assist advocates in understanding how they might fit in the cause to address injustice. iEmpathize (iE) is a child advocacy and media movement that works in the field while also inspiring culture to empathize and engage. They work in prevention, intervention, restoration, and advocacy. They share resources, such as this tool, that can assist people in understanding how to fit into the fight against injustice. Their Justice Personality Profile, is a simple and quick way to gain basic understanding on the kind of advocate you might be.

— Are you a a prevention, intervention, or restoration personality?

— What historical activist or world-changer are you most relate to?

Take the survey and review the resulting profile which gives you a personality description, highlights efforts that match your personality, and suggests ways to engage that fit your style. Then, once you understand the personality type that fits you best, consider matching your talents, skills and interests to one of our MAP initiatives or projects. Join a MAP Community Group to get engaged in local activities in your community that are addressing injustice. Host an event or activity to build awareness. Whatever your justice style, it takes all of us to end slavery.  Let’s do it together.

— Kathy Maitland, MAP Executive Director

Why we need to be dedicated to the long game

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Jesus once said, in reference to Deuteronomy, “The poor will always be with you.” A friend of mine is fond of saying it’s because we don’t do anything about it. I’ve become a firm believer in the idea that at some point, if you’re willing, God will break your heart over some form of injustice in the world, and then use that to break your heart over every other form of injustice as well.

The more I talk to folks on the front lines of fighting human trafficking the more I begin to recognize that we can’t do anything to prevent and end trafficking if we don’t also do something about poverty, homeless youth, child abuse, domestic violence, pornography addiction, and a litany of other social ills that I’d at one point partitioned off from trafficking. Now, however, I can’t keep the boxes in separate rooms; there needs to be an evolution of conversation and collaboration between people who find that their primary passion lies in addressing one (or more) of these issues.

Which means we need to be dedicated to the long game.

Because truth be told there’s no magic bullet to ending poverty, or abuse, or homelessness. There are plenty of tangible things we can do to address these issues (more than we can cover in one blog post, though you can certainly find some ideas here) but all of these things take time and energy. And that’s overwhelming. Burnout comes from having too much to do and not enough time to do it all. Similarly, compassion fatigue comes from having too many people to care about and not enough energy to love them all. These are two of the biggest challenges in staying with social justice for the long haul. Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet to dealing with these things either. And they aren’t avoidable.

If you care about fixing social problems you’re going to run into the fact that you can’t fix everything.

If you care about people you’re going to realize that you can’t love everyone all the time (because loving is hard — really).

What we need, then, is a community of grace-filled people to journey with. We need folks around us who will love us when we don’t have any love to give in return. We need folks who will sit with us in silence, their presence being the only comfort they can offer, when the questions we have (why is the world like this? why do people do this to each other? why can’t we all just GET ALONG?!?!) don’t have any real answers. We need folks around us who remind us that there is so much beauty in the world, and it’s our job to draw that beauty out in others, and point to it when we see it so people notice and find encouragement in it. Without a community like that we’re left with two options: we die or become machines. The dead and the machines both need to be reminded that there’s blood pumping through their hearts and veins, and it’s okay to be a broken(but mending), discouraged (but hoping), tired (with rest right around the corner) organisms. If you’re in a community that supports and loves you, do me a favor and invite others in. If you’re not in a community that loves and supports you, do me a favor and find one (they’re out there, and not as scary as they might seem). If we can do this, if we can learn to love each other well, then maybe, just maybe, we can see this game to the end.

Luke Hassevoort – MAP Board of Directors

Set Free – 2015

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Set Free was a powerful, interactive human trafficking family-friendly awareness event.  Over 15 churches united together and put on a two-day event that educated, connected, inspired and activated teens and adults, families and churches to be a voice for hope to end this evil in our day through the power of the Gospel of Jesus. Over 800 people attended the Friday night event and hundreds of people came over the two days to learn at exhibits, listen to testimonies, become educated from an expert panel, shop at the Freedom Marketplace and more…

View Pictures from Set Free 2015 held in Macomb, Michigan