This project focuses on the SF Bay Area's most vulnerable youth - victims of sex trafficking - providing them with mental health treatment and group support, healthcare, and workforce training. Our youth-inspired Dream Youth Clinics are vibrant and trusted locations that provide compassionate health care for youth who are homeless and/or sexually trafficked. But in order to truly change their trajectory, we need your help to fill two important gaps: mental health care and economic opportunity.
According to the FBI, the SF Bay Area is "one of the world's major sex-trafficking hubs," as reported by the SF Chronicle. Victims of sex trafficking often experience hopelessness and suicidality, and many suffer from conditions like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. To promote healing for sex trafficked youth, compassionate and responsive physical and mental health care, peer support, and economic opportunity are needed - but sorely lacking - for this highly vulnerable population.
Roots founded Dream Youth Clinic in 2017 to provide youth-centered healthcare to the region's most vulnerable youth. Today, over 40% of our youth are victims of sex trafficking and >90% have unaddressed mental health needs. Basic mental health care is not enough. With your help, we will create a robust, holistic wellness program for sex trafficked youth including individualized counseling; healing peer support groups; art, nature and expression therapy groups; and paid apprenticeships.
Our holistic model supports lifetime emotional healing, as well as a road map to self-sufficiency for sex trafficked youth. Building upon our trusted health center and effective apprenticeships with wraparound support, young people will learn new skills, build their sense of self-worth and change their own trajectory. By intervening early to provide compassionate mental health care along with economic opportunities, we are changing the odds of our young people for the rest of their lives.
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