Unedited YouTube Transcript

welcome to the five Stones meeting uh I am not Felicia as you can tell uh my
name is Lance cashen I am the founder and and CEO of forg room foundation and
I also have the privilege of serving on the steering committee for five stones with a great team and we're we're so
glad that you're here today uh I'd like to start off with some agency announce anoun Ms if you have an agency
announcement please come to the front of the room so that we can get you on the zoom meeting as well um so if you have
an event coming up in the next month or so please come on up and and talk about
it uh while while I'm waiting here uh the Ford room has an upcoming event a
human trafficking Forum on September 10th at Southwest Christian School um
that's their Lakeside campus uh we're going to have representatives from uh Freedom Shield Unbound the net and we're
gonna it's really focused on Church engagement in human trafficking how we can combat it as a as a as the church in
Fort Worth and so that is a free event it's Sunday September uh 10th it'll be in the
evening so there is a orange bright orange sheet over here on the table that
you can uh grab it's got QR codes and everything so you can register for the event so I have there you go they're
with Miss Karen down here so agency announcements hello everybody
good morning I'm Kiara with Unbound now and we are actually hosting this
Thursday August 31st from 12m to 1:30 a lawyers panel discussion over labor
trafficking so we'll be discussing how to identify labor trafficking amongst um
the clientele that lawyers might see or legal staff might find find in that sort
of setting so um anyone is invited to come but we specifically would like
lawyers any legal Personnel paralegals legal assistants um pre-law students so
anyone in that field or if you feel like you might benefit from that lunch is
provided and it's a totally free event um parking is $7 and it'll be held at
the University of Texas at Arlington in their Rio Grand Ballroom so um if you
have any questions you can email Us North Texas Unbound now.org um or if
you're interested you can also just stop by and and talk to one of us and uh to
learn more about the event so thank you very much all right so I've promised to try
to remember this but North division is doing a crime prevention fair and I seldom see any counter trafficking stuff
there at all I see a lot of horses and of course my snow cones they will be at the end of October North Division it's
I'm trying to remember the date on this thing but if you would connect with ficia through email I'll get you the details so you get registered to be
there but it would be very very helpful I'm pushing snow cones out quite a bit and I see some some faces that I know
would probably appreciate some presence um that and also catri love is here for yall I know I've mentioned this in the
past but if you guys do any Christ honoring community outreach events this is one of those that can be something
that you can get from us and we can help you out with it but our snow cones cotton candy popcorn or if you're trying to a keer for somebody that's in dfps
that's just they don't have access to the resources necessary to pull it off I'm here to serve him you just give me
an opportunity to do it and let's do it together that's it thank you thank you uh next we have our Spotlight agency uh
Ranch hands rescue and we'd like to hear from hear from you guys and if by the
way if you'd like more information on Ranch hands rescue there's a table that you passed on the way in please stop by
and and take a moment and visit with them okay good morning everybody how are you
good good Ola CA OA I'm transplant from Louisiana so
you may hear a little uh Creo accent there um but I here as uh the Director
of Business Development for ranch chance rescue and what we do is we provide a human and animal
sanctuary to basically bring hope and healing to people and animals who've
been severely traumatized the human part is we go out and we rescue young boys
who have been sex trafficked uh the average age of boys are running between
11 and 13 uh the youngest age we've had has been
six unfortunately and so what we do is we bring them into a safe and secure
environment away from their traffickers we help them with medical dental
getting them clothes feeding them lots of mental health counseling peeling a lot of layers off of if you can imagine
some of the horrific things that these young boys have gone through uh most people think that you know it's a girl
thing and of course it's horrific as a female it just you know um I can't say
what I want to say because I'm around law enforcement what I would like to do to them but I can't so um but for boys
it's just as bad um and to believe believe it or not almost 40% of the youth that are being trafficked hit
right now are young boys and so we tried to fill in that Gap
because there's really nothing there to really help young boys there's a lot of stuff for girls and you know young women
but there's really nothing there for boys to really help so we are the only safe house in the country that's
dedicated to that so we get young boys from all over the country uh we get we have a few even from the
cartel um they have a lot of issues when they come to us every single person who
a young boy who's come to us have had to have some type of medical surgery done
to them because they were traffic dead to six to seven men on average a
day so this is something that you know is is not an easy topic to talk about
but it has to get done and it has to be talked about and to create that awareness that we have to save our kids
by any means necessary we have to get out here and support these kids and look
at them from a different perspective because most will have records because they're acting out the things that are
happening to them and so we have to work through all of that as well with law enforcement we have legal that helps us
with them as well to get them the needed legal services that most of them require
um from the animal uh part of it we rehabilitate animals who've been severely abused and neglected some are
to the point that they're so badly damaged they can't be adopted so we just keep them and let them live their life
out right in in as best we can to make them comfortable for the remaining time
that they have on this Earth so most people ask how do you do this how can
you you know see all of this horrific all of the horrific things that are going on and I tell them it's really
easy my purpose on this Earth that God has given me supersedes my emotion my
focus and my desire to help these young boys is stronger than my emotions my
purpose on this Earth supersedes anything what anybody else could say or think because these kids need help and
so I can switch off a little bit it still gets you to a certain point but I
have to keep focused what's my purpose what's the assignment what's my agenda
and that has to supersede anything else so I encourage you to stop by our desk
take a look at what we have we're always looking for volunteers to help and support us in any way we have our big
Gayla coming up at the Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday September the 30th uh party party party we have to have
some you know some fun uh in the midst of a very serious thing that's going on so if you guys would like to support us
that way as well we have monthly donations quarterly donations through
volunteerism sponsorship opportunities you name it that's what I'm here for to
bring the money to create the awareness and to help these young kids and animals
heal and and so that they know that you know what people do care we can make a
difference we just need to go and do it thank you
wel um it's also time uh of the Year where
we're going to nominate our community leaders in the fight against uh human trafficking and so we have our uh five
Stones Awards annually and uh we have three three awards that we that we give
out there's the law enforcement Excellence award um there's a victim's advocacy award and then a community
impact award now unfortunately previous winners cannot be eligible to win
again uh but in any event the uh nominations must include a story a narrative describing why you feel like
that your nominee should win the award there's uh do I need to hit the button again okay there's there's the QR code
if you want to nominate uh someone for for the award um the next we have uh law
enforcement up updates uh detective Matthews from Fort Worth Police Department howdy
all right uh for the month of August got some
great stuff and some good stuff coming up uh what we've had for this last month
we've had uh several cases come in that were uh currently investigating still uh no confirmed victims that we've
recovered or suspects we've arrested yet but I did want to talk about an OP we
ran and I wanted to go in a little more in depth into the op and uh and how they
work going to try to make it brief so earlier this month we conducted an what
we call an Outreach op um where what we do is we scour all the different
commercial sex websites that we can gain access to not all of them that we can get access to but we try to find the
ones we can so I want to give you some numbers on those what what we did we
reached out to we identified 83 different ads that would be potential we
first looked for uh minors and then we just go up from there
so we found about 83 different ones that we started reaching out to uh we either
send text messages or attempt to call them out of those
83 49 of them were females and 34 were
potential male victims and again we were trying to look for uh juveniles so these
are people who are posing and they look very young on these
websites um out of those numbers we actually made the deal for seven of them
to show up uh out of the seven six of them were females and we had one male
show up so I just want to kind of explain some of this because of all the work that goes into it and all the work
behind the scenes and working up to the the day we actually conduct the op U where like these 83 we reached out to U
we proba we started contacting them a couple days before so I just wanted to show that to
show that we are reaching out to a lot of people out there but when it came
down to it we only had seven who actually agreed to show up out of those
uh two of the females uh made potential outcries that we are currently
investigating now and trying to identify the suspect so we may have a couple of cases there uh the others refused to
make any outcries so they we provided them information to try to help them get out of the life and of course the male
victim he didn't he didn't make an outcry but um want to say that because
we're going to have another one of these Ops coming up this next month uh due to large events coming to town but I just
wanted to show you kind of explain what goes into our Ops you know it's uh quite
a bit quite a bit involved and I think that's all I have thank
youall uh next we'll have detective Clark with tarant County Sheriff's Office for a law enforcement
update good morning morning um so for Taran County
August 1st through the 3 Taran County held a a thre man a three-day demand
suppression operation assistant agencies during the three-day operation were arlingon PD bford PD CPS Denton County
so Fort Worth PD and HSI um during the three-day operation
there were 32 arrests made one of the arrests was an online solicitation of a minor case where the offender believed
he was meeting a 15-year-old female didn't County so left the three-day operation and continue chatting with the
male who believed he too was texting a 15-year-old girl Denton County as so
continue to work the case until the mail was positively identified by the photos he sent a comparison to his driver
license and by his phone records by that the 24y old Mel was identified tarant
County will assist in writing a prob calls warrant for his arrest once the Mel is arrested tarant County will be
following the case due the offense occurring in tant County at the last meeting I advised our
iak inves Ator was working multiple cases involving child pornography one of the cases led to Taran County serving a
search warrant on a suspect's home while serving the warrant Taran County located and collected the suspect's computer and
other equipment capable of storing data these items were collected and the investigator plans to write a search
warrant to obtain the data of evidence from the devices in a secondary case r
investigator prepared two search warrants the search warrants for the suspect's residents and a place of business the search warrant Wars are to
collect all electronic devices capable of storing data the investigator is currently preparing an operation plan
and the search warrant should be served on Thursday once the um warrant is served and evidence is collected the
plan will be to get search warrants on all devices to collect that data and that concludes T County's
report um next we have our our main presentation uh Miss Sonia Brooks who
serves on the Five Stone steering committee uh she is the director of Youth prevention uh at Unbound and uh
she's going to talk to us about the anti-trafficking grant that was provided
to Fort Worth ISD schools Sonia please please welcome
son I love it I got my peps in the house how's everybody doing
today aren't you guys like glad that it's like 10 degrees cooler
yes thank you Lord I'm just going to say we got rain at our house on Sunday and guys I did like a little thank you dance
because it made a huge difference but I'm not here to entertain I'm here to bring you guys some great news and I
know some of you probably looked at that slide and it's like oh can she not spell so what does it say what's all the hype
about and that is the name of our youthe uh human trafficking youth prevention education grant it's called the h type
or the hype Grant and so I'm like really excited guys because hang
on here we go so in June 2020 does anybody remember what was going on in
June 2020 coid right but in June 2020 Fort
Worth ISD had the presence of mind to say you know what we know that there's an opportunity for a human trafficking
youth prevention education grant out there they were made aware of this Grant and they said you know what we know that
we have heard situations of kids within our district who have been exploited and
so we are going to work fast and furious with other NGO Partners like Unbound now
and three strands Global foundation and they came together and wrote a grant and
I can honestly say in less than 30 days and guys in light of coid and everything
else that was going on this District wanted to make sure that they were protecting their kids so of course we
apply for the grant everybody's on pins and needles wondering whether or not we would receive this Grant and I'm so
happy to say that in October 2020 we received the federal funding letter from
OTP saying you guys have got the grant so what did that mean once you got the grant like what do you do now we've
actually won the grant what are some of the next steps what do you do so when we think about what the H type program
purpose it is it's to fund leas with Partners uh for nonprofits and NOS to
base capacity of selected skills to provide skills-based trafficking prevention education so what does that
mean to provide skills-based human trafficking prevention education I'll tell you what it means think about it
from this perspective if you have a child in the school who makes an outcry what do you do what do you do if
you don't have a protocol in place if the SRO don't know what they're supposed to do if counselors are not certain what
resources exist out there if teachers don't even know what the signs are what
do you do so literally ensuring the fact that all of our key staff all of our key
personnel they have those skills that are needed to be able to provide um the
skills that we provided them with the skills that they needed to be able to
identify human trafficking to address outcries and to be able to provide
services for those kids who needed them right the next thing you have to do is you've got to be able to make sure that
within this grant it's called a demonstration Grant and we love it because we know that when we first
started off on this grant we had a lot of heavy lifting to do we had a lot of work to do we didn't have processes in
place so we knew that you know what we're going to have to create processes that are replicable think about how many
times we're involved in processes and it looks one way in one school looks another way in another school think
about even with your own roles think about how frustrating it is when you cannot replicate success and so that's
why we were so engaged that's why we really wanted the opportunity to be able to work within the context of this grant
so we thought you know what whatever we do hopefully we will do it in such a spirit of Excellence that other
districts will be able to replicate this and they'll be able to do it for their um stud students and staff as well so of
course we won so now what do we do so I think about this timeline oh that's an ugly timeline what I think about the
timeline in 2020 the first thing that we needed to do was we needed to choose our
internal team and so I want to give a special shout out to a lady who's not here today but her name is Miss AJ Hicks
AJ Hicks works with Fort Worth ISD and she has basically um been our grant
Navigator throughout the this entire process Mrs Hicks has worked tirelessly to make sure that we as a team have been
able to provide everything that school staff parents and kiddos need um and I
just want to give a special shout out to her because she has gone above and beyond the Call of Duty uh my three
strings Global Foundation Partners um vild King she has been another force to
be reckoned with in terms of helping out with the grant so when we think about the internal team let's get the internal
team together who are the people that we need guys within the school district I did not realize it I guess maybe I
should have but Fort orth i d has approximately 72,000 kiddos they have
over 10,000 staff so we were charged with making sure that school staff was
educated as well as our kids so when we think about um again your internal team
to be the boots on the ground and then we had to create a community awareness care campaign so that was kind of like
our first steps so then in 20221 we wanted to assemble a hype team to begin reaching out to the community
to develop the htsp or the human trafficking school safety protocol The Next Step was to
develop to develop student curriculum train what we call the tots or the trainers of trainers develop a
curriculum to train staff and then in 2023 or 22 to 23 educate students on
human trafficking curriculum develop internal systems for identifications so that's that's a lot that's a lot of work
but I'm here to tell you again they've done it and done it with Excellence how many of you guys actually saw this this
is part of our community awareness program or campaign and it was called the don't get tricked campaign so what
Fort Worth decided to do was to literally be able to P purchase uh bus wraps and bus bus benches and on this
sign don't get tricked guess where this came from a lot of you guys may be thinking where did
that slogan come from anybody got any guesses okay so how did we land on the
don't get trick campaign the way we landed on it is after many adult hours
of what should our slogan be we decided to go to the source guys we decided to
go to youth survivors of trafficking and I was in on those meetings and I have to
tell you it was it was just the most amazing and incredible thing to see
these youth who number one love the fact that we wanted to invest them in the
process that's number one because how successful do you think any program is going to be when it's all adult driven
when youth don't have a voice to speak into it in terms of what's important to them we as adults think certain things
are important important and kids are like no not so much so when we reached out to these youth survivors we sat in
the room with them and we asked them hey if you guys had to formulate a campaign what would it be
how do you think what do you think about your exploitation how did your exploitation happen and so you have
these kids there's this dialogue there's this buzz and they start talking and they come up with one student said or
one young person said I felt like I got tricked I felt like I got tricked I felt
like I got deceived I felt like I was sold a bag of goods somebody told me
that I was pretty they told me that they would take care of me they told me that they would have my back but they told me
all of these things in order to exploit me so yes I felt like I got tricked and
one by one you started hearing other youth who were in the room say me too I
felt like I got tricked and so then you know how kids are they came up with the song because we had told him it was
called the hype Grant all of a sudden it's like don't get tricked hyp don't get tricked hyp so you know it's like
that's the way kids are and it's a beautiful thing that we have included them in the process of this Grant and so
again by having that community- based campaign that they were able to develop
and by the way the campaign did win an award um so again just they want they
wanted other students I remember one of the kiddos said we want other students to be aware of what traffickers utilize
to lure kids we want them to be aware of how traffickers trick kids and so we
want to say the words tricked we had a little bit of back and forth about being able to utilize that word but the kids
press for it and there we go so when we think about next steps The Next Step was
for us to reach out to our Community Partners and guys that's where everybody in this room everybody who's off camera
is involved because when I thought about U Bob's Ranch hands rescue and the young
lady said purpose she talked about her purpose purpose because how do we keep
our kids able to achieve their purpose we're able to help our kids achieve
their purpose by number one us as a community acknowledging the fact that human trafficking happens it happens
here it's not something that happens over on one side of town versus the other it happens and so as a community
we have to come together and agree that it happens and all of our purposes
should be to expose it and help to educate everybody and that's what Fort
Worth is doing so when we think about Fort Worth coming together number one Fort Worth ISD and the community came
together law enforcement I can't tell you guys how amazed I was was that
multiple law enforcement agencies around tarant County came together to support
this Grant on the very first meeting literally we had representatives from
Fort Worth we had representatives from Ben we had representatives from uh
Everman we had representatives from there was another city but we had four out of the five that contribute to Fort
Worth ISD in terms of law enforcement Again by everybody coming together guys
this was an amazing opportunity for the community to see that everybody from a law enforcement perspective was invested
we even had judicial folks Lindy boura I mean we know how busy that individual is
but she attended this meeting she was able to provide us with relevant information in terms of what the
judicial system would look like as it related to the grant we think about school SRO surrounding cities CAC dfps
NGO state of Texas um tan County Commissioner's Court all of these folks
came together guys for the sake of this grant so let me pause for a second and ask you guys how many of you guys have
heard of a hype Grant very few and guys when you think about Fort Worth
ISD when we have over 72,000 kiddos who attend one particular District we should
know more about it and I will say I apologize because maybe we've not shouted it from the rooftops as we
should but guys this we are now on our third year of the Grant and we really
want your partnership we want your collaboration now I will make an announcement we are having a meeting on
September 12th in the afternoon in which we're inviting all Community Partners to come together to participate in it so
please mark your calendars for September 12th so when we think about the human trafficking school safety protocol one
of the things I I not won't be able to get to that link can
I okay so I wanted to share with you guys our human trafficking school safety
protocol this protocol number one I'm very pleased to say that in June OT tip
or the off office on trafficking in persons they actually released um samples of human trafficking
school safety protocols that were
actually they actually provided samples of um protocols in fact they thought you
know what hey these would be great samples of the community to be able to utilize I'm pleased to say with Fort
Worth ISD it was one of them I don't know what's going on it doesn't work okay well I'll make
sure that I send the link to Felicia so you guys can see it but the great thing about this protocol is it addressed
different areas for the school district so for instance for law enforcement law enforcement is definitely going to have
a different protocol or a different response as say student support services or counseling right so Fort Worth was so
meticulous they made sure that there was a protocol specifically for the SRO there's another protocol specifically
for school staff so when you think about if you are a teacher if you are a cafeteria worker if you are someone
other than say an SRO or student support services but you suspect human trafficking you suspect that there's
something going on what do you do what do you do and we know in so many
instances people don't do anything because they're uncertain sometimes because there's not
a pathway for them to follow they just freeze and so that's what is so incredible about Fort Worth again just
being very meticulous with the thoughts in terms of how do we create this protocol So within the protocol it tells
them each and every step that they need to do in order to ensure the fact that that child is taken care of and moved on
to the next person who's going to care for them so there's no doubt about what
school staff needs to do in order to report um human trafficking so then when we think about our student Support
Services they in turn have another protocol within that protocol guys it it
shows them exactly what their steps are um in order to get assistance for that student and then the last one again is
the sro's so again how many times I can tell you guys that I've been doing this ever since 2018 and I can remember
situations where youth were exploited but really there wasn't a whole lot that was done because there wasn't a protocol
so that's again another reason that this grant is so important because it provides that protocol it provides that
step by step action plan that school staff needs to incorporate in order to make sure that our kids are safe and
protected so when we think about the curriculum that was the next step that we had to do so we've Incorporated we've
gotten together our internal team to be able to address systems to be able to
address processes so then the next step was to again create the human trafficking school safety protocol after
this human trafficking school safety protocol and not necessarily after but we were working these things
concurrently so the next thing that you want to do is create a curriculum how do you create a robust curriculum that's
going to speak directly to you you get survivors included guys you get survivors included and that's one of the
things that I can say I'm so excited about this curriculum because we have survivors who were included in terms of
helping to develop this curriculum there's one piece in the fourth and
fifth grade or we call it the elementary school curriculum that I'm assuming these links aren't going to work so I'm
just going to go with it but there's one piece that when we talk about trusted
adults and I think it's beautiful because again we were part of this and literally there was a Survivor who said
can we talk about adults can we talk about the elephant in the room so often
we tell kids oh you should be able to trust your teacher or trust your pastor
or trust a police officer or trust anybody right because people have these
titles so kids think they're supposed to trust them but the Survivor said all
adults can't be trusted and so that actually started a conversation in terms
of how do we teach our kids what a trusted adult is so instead instead of us telling them who they should be we
teach them characteristics of a trusted adult and so therefore the child can
make the decision themselves or who are The Trusted adults in my life because if they have these characteristics they're
a trusted adult if they do not then they're probably not a trusted adult and
guys it's so important when we talked about uh again the young lady from Ranch
H rescue she said that there was a six-year-old who was actually brought into them who had been exploited by
trafficking we start teaching kids in the fourth grade I can tell you I have
facilitated many of those classes and guys just to see when we talk about the skills-based learning model just to see
when you teach children about personal boundaries to see how they respond because so many times kids don't know
what personal boundaries are no one's ever taught them about what a personal boundary is so if I don't know what a
personal boundary is how am I going to understand who a trusted adult is because somebody can be nice to me but
it doesn't mean that they're trusted or they should be a trusted adult or they have my best interest and that they're
not capable uncapable of exploiting me so again when we look at the elementary school curriculum there's nothing in it
that talks about sex trafficking human trafficking trafficking is not mentioned we are teaching them those foundational
principles and skills that as kids they already have we teach them about their inner voice I can't tell you guys how
many times when we teach kids about their inner voice they'll acknowledge you know what there was somebody that I
met that was creepy but I didn't listen to that inner voice and so again guys that's so important so
again this curriculum builds upon itself so when we talk about again um
Elementary it's great safe people safe places safe choices the next curriculum is going to
be our Middle School curriculum and that is called building a masterpiece or protecting a masterpiece and guys that's
so important for our kids of that age group because how many of you guys remember when you were in Middle School
anybody sometimes I want to forget it because I was real
geeky I was nerdy sometimes I want to forget that but guys that is like one of
the worst times for most of us and so again I love the title of this
protecting a masterpiece because what we teach them is guess what you guys are
masterpieces you guys are your own Masterpiece and again that's when we
start easing them into recognizing and understanding what human
trafficking is that's when we start teaching them about abuse and what that is so again all of the curriculum is age
appropriate and I can tell you there was a counselor at uh Morningside Middle
School who literally one of the things that's so beautiful about this particular curriculum is the fact that
at the end they get to create their own Masterpiece and she actually hung all of
the various masterpieces that the kids cre created in her classroom and it was
a beautiful thing to behold I mean the kids were so proud because they felt
like hey I am a masterpiece and I am worth protecting so again instilling
that into them is so important and so then when we move on to the high school
curriculum so for grades nine and 10 Again getting them more comfortable with
human trafficking and helping them to understand what is a healthy versus an unhealthy relationship we talk a lot
about relationships think about it guys there are so many individuals out there who do not know what a healthy
relationship is they've never been exposed to a healthy relationship there's always been chaos there's always
been conflict so helping them to understand what healthy looks like versus
unhealthy so and then our 11th and 12th grade curriculum that's when we put a
little twist on it we put everything together and in terms of personal boundaries healthy relationships human
trafficking but we also teach them skills about jobs and I will tell you guys that is so amazing because we do a
workshop where literally we're teaching them how to identify and recognize how
traffickers can actually use job opportunities to lure them in and I will
tell you guys they're just like what traffickers actually try to get people through work and we're like yes yes they
do so again this is very Ro very robust curriculum um again each section builds
upon itself and this is what our kids are able to learn so the next thing that we're going to do is talk about
implementation I can talk about this all day long until the sun goes down so we had Miss
Dolly here and Miss Dolly said you know what I've been a counselor in Fort Worth in for Worth ISD for over 10 years and
she said you know I didn't really think human trafficking happened but after being able to provide this curriculum to
students I realized that it did another counselor was interviewed and she said
something very similar but for her she was talking about the experience that the children had U by being exposed to
the protect curriculum I can tell you guys that with my own personal experience this is the
one that touches my heart probably more than anything else was in an elementary school this was a fifth grade
and when we finished talking about personal boundaries at the end of the training session I asked all the kids I
said if you can share with me one thing that you learn that you're going to take with you and it's going to matter to you
what is that one thing and this sweet little kid said and I'm like okay what
are you g to take with you and this child said personal boundaries Miss Sonia because I didn't know that I had a
family member who was going past my personal
boundaries and right there that's a win that is a win because that child
recognized that they had a voice to be able to speak out and say no you have
crossed my personal boundaries and I am not comfortable and guys this grant is
wonderful I encourage you guys to email me or call me so we can talk more about
it but I'm telling you each and every time that we have a child who is able to
open their eyes and see the value to see their own value so therefore they could
get to their purpose that is a win for this Grant and so some what are some of the things guys when we think about the
WIS I want to tell you guys we educated educated close to 10,000 students
approximately 30 outcries have been made 30 outcries I can guarantee you if we
had not been conducting this prevention education we would not have had that many outes and I can't tell you how many
kids have recognized during the course of training that you know what maybe I wasn't trafficked but you know what
maybe I was exploited maybe there was a situation where somebody's taking advantage of me
and now I get it now I understand so we're working guys we're
collaborating for the first time Safety and Security and the district are work
well they've always worked together but working together on this special project guys it's amazing I can remember being
in that training where Safety and Security were like Hey listen we' never heard words like trauma bonding so
making sure that everybody's communicating and speaking the same language guys it's so important and the
only way we're able to do that is because of this
grant so what do we have to do I wish that look that good but I don't but I'm
working on it so we still have some heavy liing to do guys one of the things that every single
person in this room if you know someone who is a Fort Worth ISD parent and they have a child in Fort wor
ISD help them to understand the importance of this Grant and they need to provide consent for their child to
receive prevention education you guys understand what Senate Bill n um parents
have to provide what we call Active consent meaning that they have to sign a piece of paper saying yes I want my
child to receive this prevention education so make sure that you communicate to parents if you feel like
I've done a great job that you know what they need their child to be involved in this process also participate in Parent
Academy trainings let them know that we're not just looking out for our staff
and for students we're also going down into the community we're speaking to parents we're making sure that we're
helping to provide parents with those prote effective factors so they understand the importance of what it
means for them as a parent to be looking out understanding what our children are
at risk for because so often if the parent I mean if the students know the
school knows but if the parent doesn't know that's a loss that's a loss and we
want W's in all of our categories we want wins with our parents we want wins with our kids and we want wins with our
school staff Reach Out to for worth I see if they if parents want to see the curriculum there is a mechanism for
parents to be able to see the curriculum so reach out tell them that that's available and then last but not least
recognize that human trafficking happens everywhere including Fort Worth you know you guys have heard sometimes when I
come to these meetings I will be very transparent with you guys sometimes I get a little sad because I'm like wow
you know this victim that victim or whatever but you know what today I hopefully have been able to bring you
guys some hope because guess what guys if we educate our kids and we equip them with all the
tools that they KN need to recognize the things that make them vulnerable to
recognize how traffickers will lure them in if we can equip our kids with all of
these things we can save our kids and we can help them to achieve that purpose
that they were all so meant to have so on that note I'm gonna zip it
does anybody have any [Music] questions
yes we don't we don't but here I go for Unbound now we can provide prevention
education for not homeschools but definitely for private
schools yes yes
absolutely because as a matter of fact our other NGO partner three strands Global Foundation they created a really
amazing parent uh prevention education training and so we will start offering
that to parents in October um that's going to be virtual because we did try to do some inperson things but y'all
know how Texas people are if it rains I'm not going out if it's cold I'm not going out
so yes exactly yes there's another hand for a
question yes are there plans to expand you know that's always the hope
but of course this is a grant and so that's one of the things that that community meeting on the 12 we want to
really get together and figure out what's going to happen once the funding goes away how can we make this
sustainable because again I think that that's something that's really key is you know how can we make sure that this
doesn't die out if Sonia Brooks goes away or Miss Hicks goes away how can we have people who are truly invested in
this so this is being replicated five years from now or 10 years from
now yes is there a way to expand the curriculum in the schools with because
we see such a vast amount of familial trafficking and parents are not going to sign off on their child being trained
and like want the parents to know but it's familial trafficking which it's so
prevalent now probably always has yeah is there ways around
that I wish there was but it's not you know that's um you know for us we do the very
best that we can to make sure that kids are educated but I will tell you this I think that kids talk to each other I
don't think I know kids talk to each other and so often times um I can remember doing a training prevention
education training uh in another city um several years ago and literally there were kids who were at that prevention
education training um and when they finished it was like right before lunch at lunchtime they were in the cafeteria
and they were just buzzing they were just talking so that's always my prayer and my hope that we present this
curriculum in such a way that kids talk about it with each other because they know the kids that are at risk they know
the ones that their parents are doing things that they shouldn't so but that's a great question thank you
yes
St [Music]
student train that information [Music]
located man you are so good people probably think I planted you in the
audience actually uh to answer your first question with for Worth ISD they
work tirelessly to ensure the fact that you know what when it comes to prevention education because there are
four different areas of prevention education right um so what they did was it is in the enrollment packet of every
Fort Worth ISD student so whomever the parent or caregiver is whoever is responsible for enrolling that child
they have to fill it out now they can say no but we hope they won't but it's definitely in the enrollment package so
every time a child is enrolled in a for school it's there for parents to fill out um and I it's just check you just
check the box saying Hey I want my child to be provided this prevention education um the second question is Parent Academy
with Parent Academy we will start that in October they are completing the catalog probably at the end of this week
so that way you should see the list of available trainings parent trainings um
in October you're welcome
yes it is definitely provided in English and Spanish I'm sorry the links didn't work because had they worked you would
have been I would have been able to bring that up and you would have seen how it's provided in English and in Spanish um and sometimes what we do is
we will have a person who is able to translate in the room for the kiddos and
I've seen that that's very successful so because usually we will work together like several weeks beforehand to make
sure that we're smooth um and that works really good but that's a great question because Fort Worth is what 50% Latina I
believe yep there you go
yes
great question so it's basically 245 minute sessions we have day one day two
session one session two um and literally it's only done those two two times um
but we've had many people who do extension lessons um to just help keep
it top of mind for the for the students um and so we do it every year and um
again it's we've done it for the last two years because the first year with coid and everything that happened here we couldn't do it but for the last two
years it's been very well it's been received very well especially by the students now I will say sometimes in the
high school setting you know high school kids they're so cool but always crack up
laughing you they look at me like oh you're the trafficking lady but as they're like you know looking down but
you can still see the ear that's up so again I consider that as a wi and a lot of times when they leave they're like
like okay I'll take that but yeah basically two 45 minute lessons once a
year with extension lessons if
appropriate that is actually our student support service team so basically our counselors all of
them have been trained on the curriculum except for the new people coming in and we always make sure that we have a training for new Folks at the beginning
of the year as well as the essers that Fort Worth ISD added um basically all of
those folks have been trained and guys y'all are just asking great questions I will tell you another thing too that we
have really been pressing is uh the SE it within Fort Worth I making sure that
the tools that counselors need in in order to if there's a suspicion you know
that it could be trafficking sex or labor trafficking making sure that those counselors are utilizing those tools um
screening tools to to assess you know what's going on here and even if it's not clear concern if it's possible
concern you know Fort Worth ISD they have a Family Resource Center they have three um in Fort Worth and I mean they
do a great job with referrals um and then the counselors will build that child into their case load to make sure
that that child is getting extra attention because even like with the little student that I was talking about the personal boundary I mean the
counselor was in the room with me when that happened and I mean instantly they were just like marking in their book hey
you know what I need to build extra time in to see this the student so I just like I said I love this I love
this program so much but thank you for the questions question yes is there any way
to encourage other local districts including Charter School to partner with Bo D St
yes yes there definitely is um they can reach out to miss AJ Hicks and she can
help them with that pathway um because I will tell you guys it's like Fort Worth I'm like y'all they're rocking because
literally we had um I believe it was the bont district that reached out to Fort
Worth because they'd seen all the good work that had been done and so like literally partnering with them getting
ideas in terms of you know implementation what can you do um to be successful or to have prevention
education to be successful in their communities so yes and that number her phone number is
817 814
2900 she'll love me for
that yes email address
you know what guys I love all of the questions as it relates to how can other
communities outside of Fort Worth ISD partner how they can collaborate and guys I think that's so critical because
we have to remember our kids can move around right so if I I may have a kid
who's in Fort Worth one year but then they're in Arlington another year they're in Keller another year so again
I think it's so crucial that whatever community that we live within that we partner and understand the impact that
prevention education can have and again I've been doing this for five years and I've just seen the impact that it's had
um always joke with The Advocates and I'm like guys I wish we could teach you all out of a job because that would be
beautiful but we're not there yet but hopefully one day one day we'll get
there all right thank
you well thank you guys so much for joining us today uh we'll be around we've got the room for a little bit so
if you'd like to network with one another and visit for a little while or ask Miss Sonia more questions please
stick around and we will see you next month thank
you