SAFE Coalition for Human Rights is a nonprofit registered with the Illinois Secretary of State in March 2014. SAFECHR was formed to support the objectives of the SAFE 2014 Conference: Sex-Trafficking Awareness, Freedom, and Empowerment (SAFE). The upper executive management team is entirely made up of volunteers; donating their time, energies, and commitment to making our professionals-driven, survivor-led organization a success. We also have paid staff notably Survivor Leaders, who serve as program directors, Resident Peer Support Specialists, and Survivor Trainers and Mentors.

SAFECHR was born when a group of 4 survivors presented at a professional conference in November 2013 at the Oakbrook Marriot, in Illinois. They arrived dressed professionally to speak to doctors and share their lives. Instead, there were only 6 attendees, and the rest were attending a standing room only session in the next room – on HIPPA. Devastated and in tears, they looked crestfallen and felt completely marginalized, unheard and worse – retraumatized. The founder and her colleague who chaired the session took them to lunch and requested the very kind management to provide space. We were given a separate lunchroom and began to debrief. They shared their heartbreaking stories, creating an impetus that their experiences and lack of wrap-around services needed to fuel debate and discussion on how we can create a bridge from victim to survivor, from insensitivity to creative awareness, and from successful trafficker to incarcerated criminal. Four months later, their voices led to the birth of SAFECHR.

Since January 2014, the volunteer board and executive committees have worked to gather a diverse group of highly trained professionals to come together to find solutions and develop a working global task force. The goals are to examine our training and residential protocols for best practices and changes required, review and revise protocols, and use evidence-based tools. Research in the field is scarce and there are no standardized assessment tools specifically for work in this field which is why we have developed pathbreaking innovative practices based on psychological science. For example, the ACEs-based trauma treatment protocols which have successfully transitioned over 400 disadvantaged and marginalized women from being “stuck” in trauma to successful and productive members of our society.