Human Trafficking Training: Social Enterprise
Congratulations to DCEO Awards Finalists: EarthX, Saving Innocence and Governor Abbott’s office. Together with Dallas CASA, this team created our new Human Trafficking Training curriculum.
Social Enterprise: Describe how the organization applies innovative strategies to maximize improvements or impact in the community.*
Dallas CASA wanted to make an impact on the scourge of child trafficking in our city, state and nation. To extend that broadly, Dallas CASA brought in multiple players – the Texas governor’s office, California-based Saving Innocence, EarthX film festival and many others.
The end-result is a first-of-its-kind training for CASA volunteer advocates that can be offered online or in-person. The training debuted in 2020 and empowers volunteers to recognize trafficking victims as well as perpetrators. Advocates learn about safety planning, trauma, recruitment, victim manipulation and many other challenging issues, allowing them to better support and protect high risk and trafficked youth. The online training content is available today to all 72 CASA programs in Texas and plans are progressing for the content to be shared with the more than 900 CASA programs in the U.S.
“The particular children we serve are at an exceptionally higher risk of being victimized by commercial sexual exploitation,” said Kathleen LaValle, president and CEO of Dallas CASA. “More than a set of procedures or instructions, this course is a tool box for our volunteer advocates. They can use these tools to provide the highest level of care and support to our community’s most vulnerable children. The effort to combat human trafficking of the youth we serve begins with educating and equipping our volunteers.”
The first group of trained volunteers is already at work, serving children in foster care in Dallas now.
“These traffickers are cunning and they look for the most vulnerable, which is all too often kids in foster care,” said Chad Frymire, Dallas CASA’s program director. “They go to shelters and residential treatment centers. They brainwash these kids to feel like the trafficker loves them, but the trafficker is making money off them. It’s sick and disgusting, and we want our community to come together and fight this horrendous crime.”
How has the nominee or organization delivered positive impact on an important community issue?*
According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery in which traffickers knowingly use force, fraud or coercion to compel victims to engage in sex acts against their will and for the benefit of the trafficker. Child sex trafficking has been reported in all 50 states. Dallas CASA program staff recognized that a growing threat to the safety of children living in foster care was child sex trafficking. Predators identify vulnerable young people, groom and manipulate them by offering gifts and favors in exchange for sex and then traffic them. Working together with child advocates and trafficking victims from across the country, Dallas CASA embarked on a two-year process to develop and implement a new, CASA-specific training program designed to equip and empower CASA volunteers to fight child trafficking and advocate for its victims.
Why does this nominee or organization deserve recognition in general for its work?*
Dallas CASA volunteers advocate for the best interests of abused and neglected children living in the protective care of the state. Over the past decade, Dallas CASA has grown from an organization serving under 40% of children in foster care to one that today serves more than 95% of children in care. Dallas CASA trains hundreds of new volunteers each year to stand up for children in court, advocate for their best interests and serve as a consistent adult amid a constantly changing child welfare system.
Explain how the nominee (or organization) has demonstrated strong leadership, has developed an effective board, and works with staff to create an environment that is fiscally responsible and ethically strong.*
Dallas CASA’s award-winning board of directors has been the driving force behind the agency’s tremendous growth. Following fiscally responsible models, Dallas CASA with its unique private-public model with government and our community, has mobilized to serve as many children in need as possible because no abused child can wait. In addition, Dallas CASA has more than doubled the number of sworn advocates over the past five years while exponentially increasing the number of children served year over year. Today, Dallas CASA serves more children with volunteer advocates than any of the more than 900 CASA programs in the country. Volunteers are required to go through 30 hours of training before being sworn in by the courts to represent children.
See all the DCEO 2020 Nonprofit and Corporate Citizenship Awards finalists here.
