RESILIENCE IN RECOVERY
Gratitude Report 2020
YOU ARE MAKING FREEDOM REAL FOR SURVIVORS OF TRAFFICKING In 2020, with your support and partnership, we brought housing, economic empowerment, and wellbeing services to survivors of trafficking in New York City. Thank you for your courage and commitment to resilience in recovery.
A Letter from Amanda Dear Restore community, In 2020, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, served the 2,000th individual trafficked or at risk for trafficking, and received financial commitments totaling $20 million cumulatively since 2009, our first year serving a survivor of trafficking. Along with these milestones, Restore found itself at the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York, as those trafficked in our community were especially disadvantaged. Predominantly foreign national and Latina, Asian, and Black/ African American, these women faced an all-time high risk for homelessness and unemployment. But together, as a community, we responded quickly and with intentionality looking ahead to the next 18 months with a relief, recovery, and rebuilding framework. Over 450 individuals, organizations, and churches across 34 states raised more than $300,000 to give emergency cash assistance to survivors and their families through Restore. Our staff team and volunteers provided in-person crisis response to support survivors exiting trafficking as well as in our transitionalhousing services, virtual counseling, case management, and economic-empowerment services. During a time when survivors of trafficking are disproportionately affected by the economic
impact of the pandemic, we also launched as part of our entrepreneurship initiatives a Pitch Night to invest in survivor-led business ventures and economic pursuits. In this Gratitude Report, you will see resilience in our recovery efforts. And no one is more resilient than the survivors of trafficking we serve. Survivors’ strength in the midst of pain, drive in the face of adversity, and emphasis on community when personal security is at risk have been an incredible model to me and for us in 2020. As we continue forward in recovery and prepare for our rebuilding phase, may we be inspired together as we make freedom real for survivors of trafficking.
In deep gratitude, Amanda Eckhardt Executive Director
11 YEARS
$298,686 IN
90 ORGANIZATIONS
125 JOB
OF PROGRESS in making freedom from trafficking real
2020: Our Impact at a Glance
REFERRING
survivors for services
EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE (transportation, food, medicine)
PLACEMENTS for survivors at Restore
10 MICROGRANTS
819 HOURS
awarded to survivor entrepreneurs
DONATED
19,566 POINTS
170 ORGANIZATIONS
OF CONTACT with survivors
by our remarkable volunteers
TRAINED by our team
49 STATES
represented by our financial partners
76% LIVING
INDEPENDENTLY with the help of our Housing program
What is trafficking? Approximately 403,000 people are being trafficked in the United States.ยน Restore has served over 2,000 survivors or those at risk for trafficking in New York City of 87 nationalities trafficked in over 30 states.
Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor.
Where does trafficking occur? ²
ILLICIT MASSAGE
RESIDENTIAL BROTHEL
ESCORT SERVICES
DOMESTIC SERVITUDE
Illicit massage, health, and beauty businesses present a facade of legitimate spa services, concealing that their primary business is the sex and labor trafficking of women trapped in these businesses.
Sex trafficking can occur within organized residential brothels run by a network of coordinated traffickers or within private households used more informally for commercial sex.
Escort services is a broad term used widely in the commercial sex trade, referring to commercial sex acts that primarily occur at a temporary indoor location.
Domestic or homecare workers often live within their employers’ households and provide services such as cooking, cleaning, and caretaking for children and older adults. Labor trafficking for domestic work may also occur within the cycle of intimate-partner violence.
How do survivors exit trafficking? ³ 20%
released by trafficker
50% 30%
law-enforcement action
escape
How long are survivors typically trafficked? Survivors of sex & labor trafficking who come to Restore have been trafficked for an average of 4 years.
¹Global Slavery Index (2018); a prevalence of 1.3 victims of trafficking for every thousand in the country. ²These are the top four trafficking industries for survivors of trafficking served at Restore in New York City. ³These statistics are according to data collected at Restore since 2016.
Our Solutions From the start, survivors have repeatedly told us their top three needs are housing, jobs, and counseling. We deliver three solutions essential to ensure realistic off-ramps to freedom: safe, affordable housing, economic opportunities, and trauma counseling.
Wellbeing Counseling, comprehensive case management, and resource coordination.
“Carla” was trafficked by her husband, who forced her to have sex with strangers in order to repay his family’s debts in Honduras. She was afraid to leave her trafficker because she didn’t speak English, she had no access to their bank accounts, and she relied on him for her diabetes medicine. After a friend referred her to Restore, Carla started regularly meeting with a Spanish-speaking Counselor Advocate, who helped her open her own bank account and connected her to low-cost healthcare. For the first time, Carla felt like she had options for her future. Two months after her initial meeting, Carla bravely escaped her trafficker.
Housing Emergency housing, transitional housing, and independent living.
The same night she escaped, Carla met her Counselor Advocate in the lobby of a hotel partner. She only had a backpack with some clothes. After staying in a safe hotel room for six nights, Carla moved into Restore’s Transitional Home. She was greeted by a Housing Coordinator, who helped her decorate her new bedroom with fresh flowers and provided her with toiletries. Carla described her first night in the Transitional Home as the “only peaceful rest I had in years.” After six months, Carla expressed interest in renting her own apartment.
Economic Empowerment Job-readiness classes, job placement, and entrepreneurship training. Because of COVID-19, Carla was laid off from her part-time job at a restaurant. She knew in order to secure her own apartment, she would need a full-time job making at least $17 per hour. She enrolled in Restore’s eight-week job readiness course, where she was equipped with the hard and soft skills needed to find safe work. After attending several job interviews, Carla finally found the perfect job for her. She now works 35 hours per week at an e-commerce facility. Carla lives in her own studio apartment in Brooklyn, filled with fresh flowers.
Trafficking and the COVID-19 Pandemic The United Nations projects a 1/3 reduction in progress toward ending gender-based violence by 2030.¹ The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the vulnerabilities of women and girls for the purposes of trafficking and sexual exploitation. Online recruitment, grooming, and exploitation have increased and been widely used by traffickers during the pandemic. The majority of anti-trafficking stakeholders and survivors of trafficking around the world have reported decreased accessibility of assistance and services for victims and survivors.²
¹ Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Family Planning and Ending Gender-based Violence, Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage by UNFPA, 2020 ² UN Women and ODIHR’s Guidance Addressing Emerging Human Trafficking Trends and Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020
Relief, Recovery, Rebuild The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to our local community and the survivors we serve. As the longer-term impact of the pandemic became more clear, we knew that we must evolve our program strategy to meet the changing needs of trafficking survivors and victims. We focus now on a three-stage model: relief, recovery, and rebuild.
Relief
Recovery
Rebuild
Ensuring safety and stability amidst significant loss of employment and health challenges.
Helping survivors as they reenter the job market, ensuring survivors retain their independent living in the community, and maintain health and wellbeing.
Supporting survivors in sustaining freedom in community, focusing on long-term impact on housing, jobs, and wellbeing.
12 WEEKS
7 MONTHS June 2020
December 2020
12 MONTHS December 2021
SURVIVOR-CENTERED SOLUTIONS
COVID-19 Relief & Stabilization Fund To help survivors and their families with life-saving assistance, we made emergency cash assistance quickly available with minimal bureaucracy. Our COVID-19 Relief & Stabilization Fund has raised over $300,000 thanks to the generosity of our community.
Restore was a called-upon leader to share our COVID-19 response to others in the field: “With an unstable economy, survivors face short-circuiting their recovery process and the possibility of being trafficked again. Eckhardt said that survivors they worked with told Restore they were considering returning to the streets or a trafficker after losing their jobs. “We just thought, after a decade of work, this could not be so,” she told CT. The organization quickly set up a cash fund to help women pay their bills—a short-term stopgap.” — Amanda Eckhardt in Christianity Today
•
DRESSEMBER COVID-19 PANEL:
•
BROOKLYN HUMAN TRAFFICKING TASK FORCE:
•
NYS OTDA/BUREAU OF REFUGEE SERVICES:
•
CHRISTIANITY TODAY:
Q&A with crisis-fund recipients (April 2020) Preparing for the aftermath of COVID-19 for long-term, short-term, and emergency shelters (May 2020) Quarterly Providers’ Meeting (July 2020)
Restore was featured in the article, Ministries Face the Real Trafficking Crisis During COVID-19 (July 2020)
“
I can’t express how thankful I am… When it feels like everyone else has forgotten about me during this time, I know Restore always remembers me.” — JENNY, TRAFFICKING SURVIVOR
SURVIVOR-CENTERED SOLUTIONS
Pitch Night
In July, graduates of Restore NYC’s pilot Entrepreneurship Lab presented business and career-development pitches to a group of investors eager to help launch new ventures and professional careers. Prior to Pitch Night, Restore offered Entrepreneurship Lab participants eight workshops to help them prepare pitches. Workshops included Marketing Your Business, Aligning My Career with My Strengths, Identifying the Target Audience, and Creating a Career Development Plan. An Entrepreneurship Fund was created to provide microgrants to participants for their projects. A committee made up of Restore board members, staff, and Entrepreneurship Lab mentors and volunteers established grant amounts for each of the ten Pitch Night entrepreneurs, distributing a total of $75,550.
PITCH NIGHT STORIES: Having seen firsthand the struggle of managing credit in her own community, one entrepreneur is working on a credit-repair business that focuses on the needs of underserved populations, including immigrants and people who were formerly incarcerated. After falling in love with yoga, one entrepreneur dreams of becoming a yoga instructor, holding classes and retreats so that others can experience the benefits of yoga. With ELab’s support, she will pursue training and get her yoga-instructor certification. Driven by her own experience in shelters as a survivor, one entrepreneur is working on a nonprofit for trafficking survivors, providing ESL, job training, and other services to empower survivors. She aims to address the missing gaps that she has seen in other programs and services for survivors.
Leading with Impact This year, one of our strategic priorities was to strengthen our impact tracking across the organization: We created a Balanced Scorecard to monitor strategy performance management.
We piloted our Freedom Index tool to track survivor progress across a two-year period in the areas of housing, economic empowerment, and wellbeing.
Noteworthy Trainings, Honors, and Presentations: ● Co-hosted the National Strategy Convening on Ending Human Trafficking in the Illicit Massage Industry (October 2019) ● Presented at Promoting Employment Opportunities for Survivors of Trafficking Institute (PEOST) with Futures Without Violence, funded by Department of Justice (November 2019) ● Honored as a 2019 Advocate of New York City by Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic and GenderBased Violence (December 2019) [Pictured] ● Presented on action research at the 2020 Office for Victims of Crime Human Trafficking Grantee Meeting (February 2020) ● Presented on panel with Homeland Security Investigations and Her Justice on the topic of human trafficking (March 2020) ● Presented at workshop with REST titled After Residents Move Out at the Sheltered Conference hosted by National Trafficking Sheltered Alliance (September 2020)
Noteworthy Grants: ● $650K three-year grant from the Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime: Direct Services to Support Victims of Human Trafficking ● $1.2M three-year grant from the New York State Office of Victim Services: VOCA Grant Program ● $1.1M two-year grant from the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance: Response to Human Trafficking Program
CROSS-SECTOR COLLABORATION
Partners in Freedom Trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry, run by sophisticated business people exploiting others for sex or labor to make a profit. At Restore, we know that the key to developing innovative solutions to trafficking is rooted in cross-sector collaboration with industries such as transportation, business, technology, and education.
Freedom Signal Restore is the first anti-trafficking agency on the east coast to use this text-based outreach tool. It is estimated that there are 23,000 phone numbers in New York linked with potential victims of trafficking. With the current pandemic and the likelihood of trafficking being redirected to online pornography and high-risk, high-contact services, now more than ever a tool like this is essential to reach more victims.
Restore is one of twelve NGOs in the United States selected for the Survivor Inclusion Initiative in partnership with the Liechtenstein Initiative. Lack of identification is one of the many barriers that keep survivors from accessing bank services. The Survivor Inclusion Initiative aims to help survivors overcome these barriers to create bank accounts and access other banking services.
Restore is one of five NGOs in the United States partnering with Lyft via Polaris to provide free rides for survivors escaping trafficking.
Restore partners with Workshop in Business Opportunities to equip survivors of trafficking to start and grow profitable businesses.
WE CAN’T DO IT ALONE
Our Community Partners One of the main tactics traffickers use to prevent victims from escaping is isolation. Restore creates community as a key antidote to isolation, including partnering with churches, volunteers, businesses, and supporters to ensure that survivors are accessing an abundance of resources to rebuild the life intended.
Young Supporters Network
Leadership Consortium
The Young Supporters Network (YSN) is a community of young, social justice-minded New Yorkers passionate about ending trafficking. By generously giving their time and resources, the YSN is cultivating a community of young professionals across industries that are making freedom real for survivors.
The Leadership Consortium is a group of connected, mobilized partners that help Restore advance on our most pressing strategic challenges. Leadership Consortium members meet regularly and are committed to offering ideas, connections, support, and partnership towards building new capabilities at Restore.
THE FULLGRAF FOUNDATION
SUPPORTER SPOTLIGHTS
“ “ “ We feel very blessed to have Restore as one of our partner organizations. We appreciate Restore being the “hands and feet” of the Church by fighting against the injustice of sex trafficking. It is clear that their efforts come out of hearts that desire to display the love and light of God in a weary world.” — KYRA RILEY, RENAISSANCE CHURCH
For the past few years, before his passing, my dad and I were partners with Restore, hiring graduates from their Economic Empowerment program as caregivers to my father. The Restore women made a big difference in my dad’s life. I consider them part of my family as they always treated my dad as theirs.”
— STELLA AU, ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM PARTNER
The team at Restore is an incredible group of people dedicated to opening up a path of opportunity and growth for the women they serve. [They are] dedicated to helping them find the strength within themselves and with the community around them to create the beautiful lives they deserve to live.” — GABRIELA RAMOS, AESOP SKIN CARE
SUPPORTER SPOTLIGHTS
“ “ “ To volunteer at Restore NYC is to become one with the organization and its mission. I absolutely enjoy being a part and helping in anyway possible.” — CHERLYN MONI, ENTREPRENEURSHIP LAB MENTOR AND PITCH NIGHT COMMITTEE
I support Restore because I am confident that they are the most well-equipped organization to end sex trafficking in NYC. Their team is not the biggest nor is their budget the largest, but they have a tenacity and determination that is unstoppable.” — CAROLINE SWENSON, ARCHEGOS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT
We are inspired by Restore’s quick and thoughtful response to COVID-19. Restore’s immediate response to meet the new needs of survivors sets them apart. We are equally inspired to watch how Restore is responding to the pandemic of racial injustice; carefully understanding how systematic racism is linked to trafficking and adapting to better serve all survivors.” — LOGAN GENTRY, LOWER MANHATTAN COMMUNITY CHURCH
A LOOK FORWARD:
Expanding Our Mission and Vision As we head into the new year, we have new mission and vision statements that reflect the changing needs of victims of trafficking in our community. With the help of our Leadership Consortium, Restore’s strategic problem-solving task force, we have spent the last year researching and considering our mission expansion with a pilot program serving 20 US citizens.
Our new mission:
Our new vision:
Restore NYC is a nonprofit organization making freedom real for survivors of trafficking in the United States.
A world free from trafficking. For every survivor, a life of hope, restoration, and flourishing.
With this change in mission, our services are expanding to United States citizens, and we affirm our commitment to serving survivors of labor trafficking. We will continue our service delivery at the local level in New York City and acknowledge our growing impact across the country, as we receive referrals from agencies and victims from 30 states.
Financials $ IN THOUSANDS
*Note: FY20 financial information is unaudited and has been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the US.
FY20 REVENUES
$ IN THOUSANDS
Individuals
FY20 EXPENSES
$1,028
21.9%
Client Services
Foundations
1,513
32.2%
Government
1,544
32.8%
37
0.8%
Corporate
239
5.1%
Measure
Churches
247
5.3%
95 $4,703
Events
NET OF DIRECT BENEFIT EXPENSE
Other REVENUES TOTAL
$ IN THOUSANDS
$1,522
36.7%
Economic Empowerment
831
20.0%
Housing
725
17.5%
92
2.2%
—
0.0%
Fundraise
496
12.0%
2.0%
MGMT & Admin
481
11.6%
100%
EXPENSES TOTAL
$4,147
100%
Train
NET ASSETS 12% 12%
76%
Program
NET ASSETS, BEGINNING OF YEAR
$2,238,149
Fundraising
NET ASSETS, END OF YEAR
$2,794,875
MGMT & Admin
CHANGE IN NET ASSETS
+$556,726
REBUILDING THE LIFE INTENDED FOR SURVIVORS OF TRAFFICKING IN THE US.
Staff Amanda Eckhardt Executive Director
Lynsey Agent Narai Bai Cindy Bombeeck Jenna Conarroe Gabriela Delgado-Tiang Sandra Diaz Jeannette Ellis Katie Ellis Sally Han Vanessa Holliday Ran Hu
Beisi Huang Faith Huckel Motter Patience Jin Elizabeth Kim Christa Lopez Liza Martinez Gabrielle Masih Abby Mento Hannah Patridge Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez Janine Rohrer Stefy Rojas
Fay Sardjono Lenore Schaffer Cynthia Seferin Stephanie Simpson Alexandra Slater Beck Sullivan Etelvina Vargas Samina Wali Xinyi ‘Stacy’ Wang Chador Wangmo Sijia ‘Scarlett’ Xu Aslan (therapy dog)
Board of Directors David Hung Chair
Mary Ann Dunn Amanda Eckhardt Ex Officio
Matthew Scogin Haejin Shim Fujimura Corinne Spurrier Dorthe Tate
Allen Trew Treasurer
Chris Welch
REBUILDING THE LIFE INTENDED FOR SURVIVORS OF TRAFFICKING IN THE US.
P.O. Box 1003 Bowling Green Station New York, NY 10274 restorenyc.org info@restorenyc.org (212) 840-8484
Restore is a 501(c)(3) organization All donations are tax-deductible