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October 28, 2009
MEDIA CONTACT:
Mollie Ring
SAGE Project
415.358.2737 or mollier@sagesf.org
SAGE Project Receives $800,000 Award from the Office of Victims of Crime to Provide Services to Domestic Minor Victims of Trafficking
October 28, 2009 – The SAGE Project (Standing Against Global Exploitation) has been awarded a three-year, $800,000 grant from the Office of Victims of Crime (OVC) to serve domestic minor victims of sex and labor trafficking. SAGE was one of three organizations in the nation to receive the award. The other two are the Salvation Army (Chicago) and Safe Horizon in New York City.
The OVC initiative is the first federal program to service domestic minor victims of trafficking and marks a historic shift in the government’s approach to human trafficking. Previous programs have targeted international victims.
The OVC grant will allow SAGE to provide comprehensive therapeutic and rehabilitative services to minor victims of sex and labor trafficking in San Francisco. The program will launch on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, focusing on high-activity zones for the trafficking of children, and expand to a city-wide effort as replicable models are established.
“This is an enormous opportunity for the City of San Francisco,” declared Mollie Ring, Trafficking Project Manager for SAGE. “Ever since Norma Hotaling founded the SAGE Project in 1995, we have been serving domestically trafficked youth under intervention programs that did not provide adequate resources for long-term, sustainable healing. OVC is sending an important message with this award – domestic minors are our children and we need to help reclaim their lost childhood.”
SAGE has administered two previous anti-trafficking grants, both funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). SAGE currently provides training and technical assistance to Contra Costa County and a Sacramento area coalition under anti-trafficking grants also awarded by HHS.
The SAGE Project is a San Francisco-based non-profit human rights organization committed to ending trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children and adults through advocacy and intensive, individualized therapeutic and rehabilitative services to trafficking victims.