Media Conference Speech

Thank you Jenna, and good morning everyone. I’m Kate Moore and I’ve been 
working with SafeHope Home for two years; I originally volunteered by creating a
fundraiser and organizing our annual gala, and now I manage all community
engagement.
Our home started when our executive director went on a mission trip to India to a
home of trafficked girls, and after seeing how dire it was there, he wanted to see the
state of it in Durham. He realized an immense amount of trafficking was happening
here, so he started forming SafeHope Home in 2015, and by 2016 we were running day
programs and partnering with community centres and churches. Since then, we’ve
partnered with many more organizations and have a whole house for survivors that
don’t have a home to live at during their recovery.
To give you a better idea of our services, our day program runs from 9:30 a.m. to
3 p.m. from Monday to Friday and consists of 33 courses. Each participant must
successfully graduate from each course that’s been set out for them by trauma experts
in order for them to receive the best care possible for their recovery. There are classes
on relationships, self-esteem, nutrition, family dynamics, art therapy, joy journaling and
more. Our hope is that with these courses, they can resolve their possible issues of
abuse and addictions, recognize and engage in healthy relationships, manage their
emotions in a healthy way, improve their self-esteem and self-love, and upgrade their
education and employability skills to rejoin society. Because it can be emotionally
exhausting to work through complex PTSD and life-long trauma, we also offer the
opportunity for women to engage in extracurricular activities like horseback riding,
music, kickboxing, dance and rock-climbing lessons. Throughout the program, each
participant has a peer mentor who’s also lived through human trafficking to hear their
needs and provide a lack of judgment, all while providing comfort, empowerment and
support throughout their recovery. Once women and their mentor think they’re ready to
leave the program, they still have access to outreach from us like check-ins, medical
support, court support, therapy, living necessities and more. Women on average stay in
the program for three to seven years. In terms of the day program, we’ve served 45
women within the past five months.
 We work closely with the Durham Regional Police Services as well as 16 other
related organizations to inform the public on what’s going on and prevent this from
happening to any more people. It’s great that the Violet Light campaign is bringing more
attention to the issue of human trafficking, because boys and girls as young as 12 years
old should be educated on this; high school is too late. The more we can teach kids
about consent, boundaries, self-esteem and what love really is, the more we can
prevent people from becoming trafficked, because traffickers look for vulnerability.
We hope that the proceeds from the campaign can go towards a second house,
because we can currently only house six women at the home. Durham is very lacking in
terms of safe places where women can go to escape their situation and receive healing.
With a second house, we can keep more women safe and provide the specific support
each individual requires.
Overall, SafeHope Home strives to help survivors create a new future for
themselves and advocate for a future where human trafficking does not exist. Thank
you.