Human Trafficking Happens Here:
Understanding Child Sexual Exploitation
Saturday, March 24, 2018
12-5 PM
Louden Nelson Center, Santa Cruz, CA
Keynote: The world we inherited, the one we are building and the one we envision
This keynote address will discuss the intersections between social hierarchies/constructs and victimization. By capturing the ideological, the institutional, the interpersonal, and the internalized in conjunction with the policies and practices associated with trauma response, we will explore how to incorporate this consideration in the development of healing informed spaces and approaches. We’ll find inspiration to lean into the discomfort of growth and evolution, confronting our own individual perpetuation, privilege, purpose and obligation. We hope you will feel empowered to exist as the co-creators (not the consumers) of your experiences and revolutionize the way we interact and impact this incredibly interdependent world; using the only instrument we possess, ourselves.
Jess Torres is an Organizer, Writer, Speaker, Trainer & Consultant. Full-time Liberation Artist | Part-time Hood Herbalist with a tiny online body-care and self-love store. Born in El Salvador, raised in NYC, currently living happy, QUEER and wild in Long Beach California.
Track Options
Our Conference will have three tracks: Youth, Community and Service Providers.
Youth Track: Safe & Sound Human Trafficking Prevention Workshop for Youth
The Safe and Sound Human Trafficking Prevention Workshop is co-founded by Rising International and Catie Hart, a human trafficking survivor/expert who also leads the workshop. After escaping her exploiter and graduating from UC Berkeley in 2014, she has trained thousands of youth and adults throughout California. You can learn more about Catie, and her work here. Catie will be joined by another survivor who will share how she came to be trafficked, and how she was able to reclaim her life.
The workshop curriculum is designed to educate youth 12+ to recognize the qualities of a healthy relationship, versus the red flags of potential exploitation. Many trafficking survivors, including Catie Hart, state that they would have found help sooner if they had only understood what they were experiencing and how to get help.
Workshop can accommodate 45 attendees. 20 spaces will be reserved for youth and all youth will be eligible to win prizes for attending. Workshops are funded by the Santa Cruz County Human Services Department.
Service Provider Track
Learn about best practices in trauma informed and survivor informed care.
Trauma-Informed VS Trauma-Focused Care with Jess Torress
In this session we will be reconstructing our awareness and reclaiming our understanding of trauma’s impact on the developing brain. Deconstructing trauma bounds, the continuum of abuse and expanding the narrative of coercion from the interpersonal to larger oppressive systems – highlighting hierarchical social structures and the colonial gender binaries responsible for rape culture, homophobia, and transphobia. Equipping ourselves with the cultural sensitivity, engagement strategies, and empowerment policies necessary to foster agency, purpose, resiliency and sponsor post-traumatic growth across disciplines.
Strength-based Trauma Informed Framework with Tatyana Foltz
In this session, Tatyana will share from her years of experience as a front line direct service provider with human trafficking survivors. Tatyana sees trauma-informed services as a professional mandate for anyone working with not just human trafficking survivors but with anyone accessing services.
Community Track
Get the tools you need to know what to do to address human trafficking in our community.
Beyond Trauma, A Healing Arts Journey Into Self Care and Body Connection with Cari Herthel
Healing journey into self care and practices. We will design our own self care wheel.
We Need Every Tool in the Toolbox: Collaborating to End Human Trafficking with LeeAnn Jones, Deborah Pembrook and Julie Schneider
We will not be able to end human trafficking in our community unless we bring many different people together. Come learn how the Coalition To End Human Trafficking in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties has worked to create change together with many different agencies and stakeholders and how a collaborative approach is necessary to tackle this social justice issue. This is a movement that needs many different talents – including yours.
Conference Flyer:
Special Thanks
Human Services Department of Santa Cruz County
