What we do

The vision of Gracehaven starts first and foremost with the Gracehaven House, but it extends far beyond that. As you can see from the graphic above, there are 4 major areas of the vision of Gracehaven.

Gracehaven House:

The focal point of the work of Gracehaven is to create a home of hope, restoration, and rehabilitation for victims of child sex trafficking. We’ve been working the past 3 years to develop this home and we’re getting very close to finally opening the house now that the renovation is complete. We are working through the many necessary state inspections and licensing requirements that are required before we are able to take girls into the house. Our goal is to be open sometime early in 2012.

Teach the vulnerable:

Gracehaven is not only concerned about those who are currently victims of child sex trafficking. We are also concerned for those who are vulnerable to being trafficked. In our view, every student from junior high on up through high school and beyond is vulnerable to being entrapped by a trafficker. That’s why we’ve recently developed a curriculum on child sex trafficking specifically for teachers, school counselors, and other school workers. This curriculum allows teachers across the state of Ohio to be able to incorporate teaching material regarding child sex trafficking into their teaching responsibilities from the 7th grade all the way through high school. Our vision is that every student that graduates from high school in Ohio has been trained on how traffickers draw young people into child sex trafficking so that they are able to recognize the exploitation involved and prevent themselves from becoming prey to these predators.

Teach the reachers:

There are professionals in our society that are more likely to encounter victims of trafficking than other workers. We call them the “reachers”. Gracehaven is involved in teaching these “reachers” who work in various fields such as the healthcare profession, children’s services, social work and as well as other fields. We have developed specialized curriculum to train healthcare professionals how to first of all recognize victims of human trafficking, and then what specifically they should do when they encounter a patient they suspect may be a victim of trafficking. We are in the process of developing curriculum to train foster parents on the issue of child sex trafficking so that they are better able to take care of foster children who have been victims, as well as prevent their foster children from falling prey to traffickers.

Reach the victims:

Gracehaven has an outreach caseworker who is a licensed social worker. She works closely with the Central Ohio Rescue and Restore Coalition and responds to calls coming into their 24 hour hotline number that relate to victims of child sex trafficking. In addition, she goes into Franklin County Juvenile Detention Center once a month to interact with the youth there, talking about the issue of child sex trafficking.