Our mission
Rescue is critical. Rescue is not enough.
We run healing and empowerment retreats for people affected by trauma and human trafficking, in the United States and five other countries.
Human trafficking is people being bought, sold, and controlled against their will. Their bodies, their labor, their freedom, taken through force, fraud, or manipulation. It generates an estimated $236 billion every year, and an estimated 49.6 million people are living in modern slavery right now.
Getting someone out is the beginning. It is not the end. Freedom without healing is not really freedom. Without addressing what happened, without identity and emotional restoration, without knowing they carry purpose in this world, a survivor stays vulnerable to being exploited all over again.
Physical freedom is only the start. Wholeness is what makes the change last. That is the gap we exist to fill.
We do not run the shelters. The recovery homes we work with provide shelter, therapy, schooling, and case management, and that foundation is non-negotiable. What we add is the layer that safety alone does not reach: movement, art, circle, identity work. Not a replacement for the foundation. The rest of the house, built on top of it.
Before the retreat
We sat down and asked ourselves one question. Not what do we want to teach them. How do we want them to feel.
Fourteen answers. Then we built the retreat around making every one of them true.
How do we want them to feel
- Seen.
- Safe.
- Childlike.
- Peaceful.
- Pampered.
- Included.
- Hopeful.
- Celebrated.
- Capable.
- Purposeful.
- Empowered.
- Special.
- Creative.
- Joyful.
What that bought
What a retreat actually looks like.
The first time we were able to take them away from the home they were living in. This is what the money is for.
A pizza party
The first night is not a workshop. It is pizza, and noise, and nobody asking anything of you.
Movie night
Somewhere safe enough to fall asleep in front of a film.
A dinner where everyone dressed up
Because they deserve to feel beautiful, and because nobody had done that for them.
Spa time
Hands and feet and hair. Being cared for, physically, by someone who wants nothing.
Art therapy
Where someone who cannot say what happened says all of it with a paintbrush.
Purpose workshops
Creative sessions that help someone uncover their purpose and know their own worth, so they do not have to go back into the sex-for-sale industry.
Night swims
Wherever there is water to swim in. For most of them, the first time.
And underneath all of it, the work. How to process an emotion. How to make beauty out of a scar. How to keep healing a wound you are still carrying.
Since we started
Ten thousand people. This is what ten thousand looks like.
One mark for every woman, man, boy and girl we have walked alongside. It is still filling.
- social impact leaders trained
- 1,500+
- volunteers equipped
- 600+
- nations represented
- 25+
“The work you did with the girls has changed their life. They told me that these are the best exercises they have ever done. You brought their worth back and their dignity back.”
“I thought I was going to Costa Rica to serve others. I had no idea how much it would change me. I came expecting to pour into the lives of these incredible young women. Instead, they poured into mine.”