BIDDEFORD — CourageLIVES, a treatment program for survivors of human trafficking and exploitation, has received a $10,000 grant award from the Penobscot Valley Health Association Fund of the Maine Community Foundation.
With an estimated 200 to 300 girls and women trafficked in Maine each year, these funds will help further develop CourageLIVES’ Outpatient Treatment and Community-Based Outreach Services Project that was piloted last year.
“This grant will help so many women in Maine who come to us with nothing and are trying to rebuild their lives,” says CourageLIVES Director Carey Nason. “The funds will help us support women with clinical and case management staff; allow us to reach further into communities via outreach and education; and help our clients with everyday basics like transportation to school or work and even food.”
CourageLIVES provides a whole person approach to therapeutic and supportive care. Treatment includes connecting with survivor leaders; individual and group mental health counseling services that also address substance use disorders; educational support and vocational training; support securing jobs and long-term housing after participating in the program; and an ongoing, long-term support network for survivors.
Worldwide about 4.5 million victims have been estimated by the Human Rights First organization to have been forced into human trafficking in the past year and at least 100,000 to 300,000 of that figure are children.
Human trafficking is defined as the exchange of sexual acts for anything of value where the individual is coerced or manipulated into the agreement through addiction or desperation. Subjects of human trafficking may not immediately recognize themselves as victims and although coercion is not always obvious, trading sex or sexual acts as a strategy to secure basic needs such as housing, food, drugs, and social support is prevalent in trafficking situations.
A report authored in 2016 by South Portland’s Hornby Zeller Associates, Inc. for the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault estimated that the number of sex trafficking cases in Maine ranges from a low of 79 to a high of 893 per year.
The program is a branch of St. Andre Home, Inc., based in Biddeford, which was founded by the Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec and has a history of providing services to vulnerable women and children for more than 75 years.
Nason said that the program expects to serve more than 100 people who have questions or needs related to trafficking and exploitation in Maine over the course of the next year.
To learn more or support CourageLIVES, visit www.CourageLIVESME.org
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