February 2021 Impact Report
Jasmine's Promotion
Jasmine, a survivor of human trafficking who has been in our India Sanctuary for 3 years, has worked hard to grow her skills and demonstrates the markers we look for at each of the 4 growth levels of the program - staying focused to complete her graduation, managing her finances, health and relationships, contributing to the Sanctuary community, as well as those outside.
As Jasmine took on new responsibilities and was challenged out of her comfort zone we could see her develop a growth mindset and her confidence in her ability and approaching new tasks had grown. She reached out to other young women in the program and was able to connect with them in a way that they could turn to her for advice and guidance. She also serves as a leader and trainer at our partner organizations reaching out to other vulnerable women communities.
Jasmine has been taking initiative working as a team lead with the other young women for the past several months - checking on their goals for the day, their progress, assisting and guiding them. We are looking at using this role to help her grow in how to deal when conflicts arise and working with different people.
Growing in Math
The ladies in the Tijuana Sanctuary are doing great in Math! We did a little upgrade in the difficulty level to make it a little bit more interesting and the results were amazing. All of them did the exercises correctly and were pretty satisfied with the outcome.
Learning math has many everyday applications. An example would be when splitting the costs of shared lunch, now they can use division to calculate how much each one of us has to pay in order to complete the payment for the lunch without using the calculator.
Letter to Myself
In the Uganda Sanctuary, the young women opened letters that they had written to themselves in July of 2020 sharing what they hoped to have achieved by year end. It was very exciting to hear the women share how much they had achieved; one of the women shared how she had shifted from staying with her sister in another district to moving closer to the office, another shared how she wanted to buy 7 cows, and she has successfully done so. Another shared how she really wanted to renovate her mother’s house in the village and she had achieved this.
We have all written another set of letters for this year, to be opened in December 2021 so the girls continue to see the changes they are making and feel accomplished with their progress.
Love and Human Trafficking
This month, Polaris Project reported on the ways that sex traffickers use love - romantic love, friendship, or familial - to groom and manipulate victims.
“Of the sex trafficking situations reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2019, the top two ways that sex trafficking victims were recruited into their situations were through intimate partners or family members.”`
6 Steps of Grooming:
Targeting the Victim
Gaining Trust
Meeting Needs
Isolation
Exploitation
Maintaining Control
Read more: Polaris Project: Love & Human Trafficking