Ending Human Trafficking Canada Project #49236

Fund Workshops to End Trafficking in Canada

by Aura Freedom International

Project Report | Oct 24, 2024
Expanding Our Impact to Prevent and Eradicate Human Trafficking!

By Tashin Rodoshi | Senior Community Engagement Specialist

Marissa as an Expert Witness for Bill 173 Study

Your generous donations and support this year allowed us to make a profound impact on the lives of the survivors and communities we serve.

At Aura Freedom, we are dedicated to eradicating human trafficking and sexual exploitation, for good. We relentlessly advocate to support survivors of gender-based violence and trafficking at a systemic level because of you!

For example, Aura Freedom recently contributed to a Study on Coercive Behaviour undertaken by the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women, both in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV) and human trafficking (HT). In our brief, we lay out the risks of criminalizing coercive behaviour and the potential negative impacts on survivors.

Further, Aura Freedom's Executive Director, Marissa Kokkoros, was invited to appear as an Expert Witness before the Legislative Assembly of Ontario’s Standing Committee on Justice Policy to support their Study of Intimate Partner Violence. Marissa and our Manager of Programs and Development, Danielle Warren, then developed and submitted a 45-page brief recommending a framework to address the IPV epidemic in Ontario.

These advocacy efforts were possible because of your solidarity, support, and trust in our work.

We see you and we are grateful for you!

Beyond advocacy, we expanded our frontline training to develop capacity for frontline service providers, community members, the healthcare sector and more. Two recent organizations we've provided frontline anti-human trafficking training for are Sakeena Canada and Homes First Society at Willowdale Welcome Centre.

We also extended our anti-human trafficking services beyond the immediate gender-based violence, human trafficking, and social services sector - to healthcare. We believe that healthcare spaces, particularly, sexual health clinics have a unique opportunity to intervene and prevent possible situations of trafficking and sexual exploitation. Human trafficking and sexual exploitation are public health concerns preventing our communities from living healthy lives.

This imortance is evident when UP TO 88% of human trafficking survivors seek medical care while being trafficked, yet ONLY 6% of healthcare professionals report treating them.

For years, we have heard our partners in healthcare and community members inform us about the critical need for education and tailored training on human trafficking prevention for frontline healthcare service providers. And with your support, we applied our years of human trafficking expertise, and survivor insights to develop an anti-trafficking training curriculum for healthcare workers and registered nurses at York Region's Public Health (Sexual Health Clinic).

This is not the first time we are partnered with the healthcare sector to eradicate human trafficking and sexual exploitation. We joined the Sick Kids Lotus Health Advisory Committee, and supported the creation of the Multisector Community Response to Child Sex Trafficking: Toronto Region Protocol and Resource Toolkit 2023. This resource is out now and available to the public.

These engagements with the healthcare sector in our Province are a strategic part of Aura Freedom’s efforts in Secondary Prevention of gender-based violence and human trafficking, and would not have been possible without you.

We hope to count on your support as we are committed to continue scaling up anti-trafficking expertise to cross-sectors, from emergency response workers to hospitality, mental health, and social services.

Thank you for believing in our work. Your contributions allow us to keep pushing forward, scaling up our anti-trafficking programs, and expanding our reach in the fight against human trafficking and sexual exploitation. We are deeply grateful for your commitment to this cause and excited to continue building a future free from violence against women together.

With heartfelt gratitude and solidarity,

Tashin Rodoshi

Tashin & Danielle co-facilitating our HT workshop!

Links:

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Jul 3, 2024
Connecting with Community to End Human Trafficking

By Danielle Warren | Manager of Development and Programs

Tashin of Aura Freedom with other panelists

Your support has enabled us to continue our work to eradicate one of the fastest growing crimes worldwide: human trafficking.

But, importantly, human trafficking is not simply a crime, it is a human rights abuse that is happening here in Canada at crisis rates.

Contrary to general perception, human trafficking is alive and well in Canada - with most reported cases falling under sex trafficking and sexual exploitation.

93% of sex trafficking survivors in Canada are Canadian.

97% of survivors are are women and girls.

92% of victims knew their trafficker beforehand.

1 IN 4 of Canadian sex trafficking victims are children and youth UNDER 18 years old.

This number is growing: online sexual offences against children have increased 217% since 2014.

This is why your support has been so pivotal. Your donations and support is not simply a financial contribution - it’s a powerful statement of solidarity with survivors, and a commitment to end this gender-based crisis.

We believe that the community must be deeply aware of the crisis of human trafficking in Canada before we can eradicate it together. This is why, through your generous support, we have been able to continue sharing our decade-plus experience in human trafficking advocacy and awareness, education, training, research, policy change and survivor support with our communities.

This includes acting as a panelist at various community partner events such as FCJ Refugee Centre's event, "Buildig Safety & Support: A Survivor-Led Approach to Gender-Based Violence & Human Trafficking" and Hope4Refugee's "Global Conference on Sexual Health, Reproductive Rights, and Gender Equity in Humanitarian Crisis".

Further, we have brought our frontline training to social services in the community where women and girls are disproportionately at risk of human trafficking, such as womens shelters like Women's Habitat and Sakeenah Canada.

We also ensured we brought our resources, tools, and service knowledge to the public through community events such as the 2nd Annual Anti-Human Trafficking Conference hosted by Anti-Human Traffickng York Region, and another Human Trafficking Awareness Event in York Region hosted by the York Region community. This allowed us to connect with community members, parents, youth, and local organizations to increase human trafficking awareness and prevention knowledge and tools directly to the communtiy themselves.

Lastly, we know that to prevent and end human trafficking in Canada, we must advocate for government-level change both locally and nationally. Locally, Aura Freeedom consulted staff from the City of Toronto on strategies to address the need and support of survivors of human trafficking. We continue to inform the City's anti-trafficking efforts through End Trafficking TO to inform the city on how we can better address sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. At the National level, we collaborated with other community partners to send an Open Letter to Canadian leadership regarding the renewal of Canada’s National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking to ensure that efforts to prevent and eradicate human trafficking and support survivors do not disappear with the Strategy that is set to expire this year.

Your ongoing solidarity and support is not taken for granted. It is through support like yours that we are able to strengthen our efforts and bring us closer to our shared goal of preventing and eradicating human trafficking.

In solidarity and strength,

Danielle Warren
Manager of Programs and Development
Aura Freedom International

Aura Freedom's display at a community event

Tashin as a panelist at yet another conference

Links:

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Mar 7, 2024
This Year's Human Trafficking Awareness Day Was One of Our Most Impactful Yet!

By Danielle Warren | Development Manager

Our Biggest Anti-Human Trafficking Event YET!

To our friends, our supporters, our fellow activists and advocates,

February 22nd was Human Trafficking Awareness Day in Canada.

This year, over 400 community members, frontline workers, parents, youth, and more registered for our knowledge sharing event that centered the root causes and called for the prevention and end of human trafficking in Canada.

But why is this so transformational?

Because gender-based violence (such as human trafficking) is an epidemic in Canada - and it is gender-based.

50% of Canadian women and girls have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16.

97% of Canadian human trafficking survivors are women and girls.

And the ages of both sex traffickers and their victims are continually getting younger.

Aura Freedom has known for a long time that youth-targeted interventions that center education and empowerment are vital to ending gender-based violence and human trafficking in Canada.

But at Aura Freedom, we go a step further. Our services target not only youth - but the community of stakeholders that work the closest with youth: teachers, parents, frontline workers, children’s aid systems, and more.

When community members are educated on, aware of, and equipped with tools on gender-based violence and human trafficking - that is when we can prevent the sexual exploitation of youth.

Thank you for working with us to see this mission become a reality. This work would not be possible without you.

Since our last report, we have advocated for training and education on human trafficking to our Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP's), calling in our government to ensure ways we can end gender-based violence and human trafficking in Ontario, and across Canada. We continue to further our collaborations with other local and national communities by speaking at events that centered gender-based violence and human trafficking, hosted by Public Safety Canada, Canadian Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, WomanACT, YWCA Canada, Central Housing Neighbourhood, and more. We are dedicated to continuing to share our gender-based violence and human trafficking knowledge and tools nationwide.

Thank you for being on this journey with us. We are so grateful to have you with us as we work towards preventing human trafficking by addressing and supporting not only our youth, but the community members that surround them.

We are so grateful.

In solidarity and strength,

Danielle Warren
Development Manager
Aura Freedom International

We Shared Our Human Trafficking Expertise

Check Out Our Human Trafficking Info Hub

We Speak On How to End the GBV Epidemic

Our Executive Director on a Panel to Combat GBV

Links:

Visit Aura Freedom's Human Trafficking Info Hub to Learn More

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