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80% Return to Their Trafficker. Empowered Network Changed That with Kristy Norbert · find your cause

• speaker-0: think it's over eighty percent of folks go back into the life. If we were a soft handoff to when a survivor reached stability, would survivors then have lasting sustainability as far as economic resilience and economic mobility? That was what our theory was. speaker-1: Alrighty, thanks everyone for tuning into this episode of Find Your Cause. Today we have Chrissy Norbert, who's the co-founder and executive director of Empowered Network. Chrissy, thank you so much for your time on this Friday. Yes. So per usual, we always like to start with the mission of the organizations that we're interviewing. So what is the mission of Empowered Network? speaker-0: Thanks for having me. Power Network works with survivors of human trafficking to break cycles of exploitation and poverty and to help survivors reach economic and financial resiliency. speaker-1: I have a lot of questions, but before we do, why you? Why is this an organization that you co founded and are passionate about? speaker-0: Yeah, I definitely didn't set out to start an organization. By training I'm a social worker. So I discovered I know we were just talking about our children, but I w discovered in third grade I saw like an after school special when there was such a thing before like cell phones and we came home and watched T V for like after school specials. There was some terrible movie about a social worker working with a homeless child and mom. And I was like, ⁓ yeah, I wanna be that social worker. So through many roller coasters and stuff, I ended up getting training as a social worker. And I've maintained those certifications throughout. And so I went to undergrad and then got my master's in social work and have always worked with vulnerable and marginalized populations. It's where I felt the most comfortable. It's where I felt like I was supposed to be. I never imagined myself working in the anti trafficking field. So when I moved to Connecticut, about I guess I it was ten a little over ten years ago now. I was asked to meet somebody to the a board chair of an organization to see if they wanted to hire an executive director for the first time for their anti trafficking organization. And I was like, ⁓ human trafficking, that's like super dark. I'm like I'm really into working with at risk youth and marginalized population, but human trafficking and I remember Leaving that lunch and being like, who do I think I am? Like I I'm like the most like privileged, entitled white woman in the world. I why would I turn this down? And so I did and I took it on. And that board chair happens to be Abby Fabiashi, who I ended up fa founding Empowered Network with. So I I became the executive director of an organization working in Southeast Asia, where I learned a lot about what human trafficking was. And saw it up and close and personal for the first time ever. And once you see the worst of humanity, you can't unsee that. And you want to be part of that solution. So that's I think my long answer to why how it got here. By training him as social worker, fell into executive director roles and when we moved here, got into anti trafficking work. speaker-1: Yeah. Awesome background. I feel like we've done a couple of interviews with organizations that focus on trafficking and I think the first one that we had, this was years ago, I had a presumption of what trafficking is and it was completely off. It wasn't as broad as it should have been, it didn't include as many people as it should have. Wha what kind of was your personal journey of trafficking before you knew a lot about it and then when you saw it firsthand and then when you decided to have this be a focus of your Yeah. speaker-0: I think I don't think my I don't I can't tell you. I guess I can't remember things anymore. But I imagine that it wasn't that much different than probably what the average American thinks of trafficking now. ⁓ this is that far off thing that happens in other countries that people are bought and sold for the benefit of this terrible man and what a terrible, awful, gross thing. I can't believe that exists somewhere. I imagine that's kind of what I thought about. I didn't think about exploitation in the United States. I didn't think about how much I was part of being part of exploitation or how things that I did were part of any type of slavery or I didn't. I was and I was in the field of social work. So I think first working overseas and being like, yeah, this is what I thought it was. And then what happened is I started doing an audit of what is how does this look like in the United States? What's happening in the United States? And I was like, ⁓ my God, this is right here. Not only is it right here, but we're not serving people in our own backyards very well. And that's happening right in my own town. It just doesn't look like how we thought it looked. So ⁓ I think you're I think you're right. I think now it's really easy for me to be like Nobody's nobody nobody's paying attention 'cause they don't want to. But don't know if that's true. I think that because I'm in it every day. So that's a really good point. If I look back to where I was twenty years ago or thirty years ago, I've been like didn't think about speaker-1: Yeah, I think the first time that I'd probably been ⁓ introduced with that was the Liam Neeson move and take in. That was like when you think human trafficking, you think somewhere in like Europe where you have this really advanced organization that's just like stealing older women from the airport. That was my like really inexperienced opinion of what trafficking is. So now your organization, how does Empowered Network define trafficking? broadly and also how does it define exploitation and like what's all included in that definition. speaker-0: So we use the federal definition of human trafficking, that there has to be force fraud or coercion involved with human trafficking and exploitation for profit or personal gain from somebody else. That's the that's the TVAP of 2000, the federal definition. So we actually use that definition to define human trafficking at our organization. It's the easiest and cleanest. We work with all types of human trafficking. So sex is the most common. But labor trafficking in the United States, familial trafficking, it's not just sex trafficking, it's other types of trafficking too that fall underneath the same definition. speaker-1: What is familial? I'm familiar with sex trafficking and labor trafficking. What is familial trafficking? speaker-0: When you are trafficked by someone in your family. speaker-1: Yeah. To to what end? For for what reasons? speaker-0: So like we had a case yesterday we just got the ability to help with alleviating like doing documentation to take someone's credit that happened. There's this new law that went into effect that if your credit was affected due to your trafficking, we can take that to an attorney who then can submit it to the credit bureaus to get that taken off. Of your credit scores, and then your credit score can go down, so your predatory lending gets better, and so your accessibility and access to everything gets higher. And that was a familiar trafficked her dad had trafficked her to other men and had opened up credit cards all in her name, and ended up actually that she had to declare bankruptcy at one point. So anyway, when this is over, her credit score will skyrock and go up because of it. So that was an example of familiar trafficked. speaker-1: And w which is bringing up a whole nother topic where the long term effects of somebody that has been trafficked and the impacts of it, that's something that I would never would have thought of because you think about how horrible it is like in in the moment of what's happening and hopefully when it's resolved and fixed and whoever's brought to justice is brought to justice. What are the following things that you don't think of that impact that person in cr like who would have thought credit score? Wow. So Empowered Network, your organization, I'd love to dive into it. When you guys when you founded the organization, what were some of the areas a part of trafficking and exploitation did you want to really focus on and start with trying to solve and fit? speaker-0: I think what we when again, because I was a social worker and I saw like I worked in the field and saw like what what's happening in this field, where are the significant gaps? And what I discovered is it's not unlike what's happening in other fields, but you take somebody in in especially in the United States is okay, this person is in crisis, they're on fire. Let's put the fire out. Let's put our resources to putting this fire out next. And they're waiting for the next person, then they'll put that fire out, and then the next person will come. And what's happening then is okay, this person moved on, but they're just cycling to the next program and the next program and the next program and the next program. And it's the most expensive way to not solve the problem. And so they were saying, Okay, so Survivor X, we serve this survivor, we're just passionate them to the program down the street then. Because there's no way they're If they're making minimum wage, they can find a livable place, they can make ends meet by living somebody else. So they need more support this way. So they make it housing support this way, but then they need workforce development from somewhere else. And so they were just like, gosh, if there was just one place that cared that a survivor reached some level of stability, but had was waiting for like a shoe to fall off to go back into crisis, which for survivors who have been exploited for so long, they're like, My only option here is I know how to make money. Yeah. I can easily go back into the life and go back to my trafficker, because at least that was take taken care of there. And so that's like the the intention behind how Empowered Network started. If we were a soft handoff to when a survivor reached stability, would survivors then have lasting sustainability as far as economic resilience and economic mobility? That was what our theory was. speaker-1: Is and I don't know a term in trafficking for this. I'm only familiar with incarceration, but recidivism is kind of going back. Is there a similar term in a percentage of recidivism but in the trafficking sphere? speaker-0: Yeah, I hope I don't get this wrong, but I think it's over eighty percent of folks go back into the life. And empowered network, I don't want to be misleading because we only track people when they graduate in Powered Network. So it's less than it's less than two percent from the time they graduate in Powered Network. Now we're just starting to gather data from years down the road, which is harder to gather. So we have very high success rates, but again, we're a one year program and we're grad we're measuring those that data right at the end. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: So I don't wanna give misleading information, but it's very successful for us and for survivors at this point. speaker-1: And is it 'cause you guys are focusing on just like those those hierarchy of needs of a person that has experienced it and kinda the the negative impacts long term of it, whether it's like being able to find a job, being able to find housing, food, is it is that kinda what you're targeting first and connecting the survivors with resources to to kinda meet those like basic needs? speaker-0: We're such a different program than like a case management program. So most survivors will exit the if they're lucky enough to exit the life, they'll exit the life for some type of crisis. So for residential support or therapeutic support or legal support, and they'll receive some type of case management service. At some point they exhaust that funding or they exhaust that service. And so at that point they've reached some stability. Most of the time they have some type of income, some type of support, some type of living situation. Then they get nominated to Empowered Network because they are stable. They're stable. What we work on is okay, so let's trade your problems up really. What's the next level of problem? Most of the time it's I want a career. I don't want to be the manager at Taco Bell forever. I've got three kids. I'm a single mom. I don't know how to figure out child care and keep this job and I need another job. I want a career and I don't know what I don't know. This is not what they're saying, but this is what we interpret. Or I really know if I went down this vocational or certificate path, I could potentially get a job somewhere else and have a career as that that way. I could never pay for that. There's no financial aid for that. So we're really that stepping stone to like getting out of that minimum wage. Paycheck to paycheck. I don't have a savings account. To okay, you might at the end of our program you might have some savings. The goal is to have some career. You're starting an education program. You're looking farther down the road. One of the questions we ask right away in our program is where do you see yourself in one year? Where do you see yourself in five years? And most we've asked that from day one. And most of the time in the beginning, people are like, no one's ever asked me that. I don't know. And if they say, I'm just trying to figure out this weekend. They're not ready for a program. But if they say, Let me think about that, or if they're like, God, you know what I would love? I would love not to be worried about how I'm gonna pay rent next month. I know I can pay this rent if I get this job. And so then we build what we call an empowerment plan. It's a twelve month plan of how to get them to the places that they want based on the goals that are realistic and sustainable and that we could actually do with them. speaker-1: Yeah. I imagine e each individual survivor has very unique goals for one, three, five years. D do you guys recognize patterns? Are some related to employment? So work on whether it's resume building or mock interviews or other employment resources and partnerships that you guys develop. Are there some patterns that you're able to speaker-0: Yeah, so we're not experts at everything. We now have we now have two type of pathways that we go on. One is what we call a launch program. So it's for survivors who come to us and they're like, I know I need to get out of what I'm doing, but I don't know what that looks like. Yeah. And so it's really an exploration phase of or I need to get my GED and I need to get out of this transitional living. So they explore that for as long as they need to with our advocates. Until then until they're ready to move to what we call our core programming. And that is tactical funding and almost a blueprint, like a plan of okay, so you're going to enroll in this certificate course. That if you graduate in this certificate course in six months, the market in your area for this job is X. And so we have seen that in those Our average wage wage gain has gone from it's twenty-one thousand to thirty-three thousand and it keeps going up. Yeah. And that's just the beginning. That's just because they've gotten a certification, maybe they got that first job in their field. I'd say the biggest careers that we see are cosmetology, hospitality, as and then medical as far as people love, people don't love. But a good career option is like a CNA to an LPN to an R A lot of survivors want to be entrepreneurs and so that is great until we r we talk and we have some reality checks of like what does that actually mean? Or nonprofit leaders or work at a nonprofit or be a caseworker or be a social worker. And again, that's fine if that's what they really want to do, but sometimes it's that's all that they really know. Yeah. Because they Yeah, and like they some people feel so compelled to give back. They're like, ⁓ this organization helped me so much get out that I have to give back. And and that's what they know is true. And I'm like, or you could be an electrician and give back in a different way. You know what I mean? I just it's hard when we don't know we don't know to So w some of our job is exposure. speaker-1: Yeah, it's really interesting you mentioned that the wage gain statistic. I guess one of my questions with a lot of organizations is like how are you measuring your impact in a way that continues to drive engagement and involvement from funders and donors and repeat donors, for example? And what are some of those statistics that you felt have resonated most with people that are supporting your organization? speaker-0: Yeah, we just went through a whole process in all of 2025 and changed the way we do all of our outcomes because of this. We used to only report, and I'm proud of how we always reported it, but we used to report at the end of a program, did you have stable housing and what was your wage gain? And it was like 90% over 90% had stable housing, and the wage gain was always like $11,000 to $15,000. And it was always successful, right? And it was great. And no, and nobody was retrapped. And so we worked with these outside consultants who are amazing. And basically we were like, they were like, okay, we have a lot of questions. So now what we do is we measure housing education, employment, and we say, where do you come in at as far as the stability? So if you come in and you are living in a shelter, that's one that's fine. We'll measure you with the scales one to four. We'll put you on a certain scale. And the same thing with education and employment. Our goal at Empowered Network, if we're focused on one of those areas, our goal is to make a gain in those areas without backsliding in any other areas. So that's wonderful if you are making a gain in education, but what if you become homeless during that time? So our goal now is that we have 87% are making successful gains in the areas we're focused in with zero backslide, which is like amazing. And we're just starting the data collection. And we still have those numbers for the wage gain. And now we're like able to say, ⁓ for people that focus on education, this is what their wage gain is for people that foc so I think when nonprofits put out those impact reports and numbers and being like, ⁓ we served four thousand people. Now we're able to say we served a hundred and forty people successfully by this measurement tool, by saying we made we were able to work with them to make a gain in these six successful areas. So it really has changed the way. We do our work completely and where are our resources going? So if we're not the best organization to help them, who is? speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, and I'm assuming that data is obviously not only to be shared with donors and potential donors, it's like the survivors. Because if I'm a survivor, I want to look at that data and be like, where's the least risk option with the highest upside for a career if I don't really know? And that data is like literally for like first party from other people that have gone through what I've gone through. speaker-0: Yeah, we're just starting to get to that point. So now, like what I can't wait to get to a program at is that when someone says, This is a good one, and we used to get this a lot of I want to become a realtor. And so what I need help with is getting my realtor certificates and my realtor fees and on. Now we'll soon have the data and being like, Okay, the reason that we think that's wonderful, we don't ever want to shoot dreams down. In your area, this is a successful route for a realtor. In our program, these last twenty people have done it and one of those people is still a realtor because of all of these reasons. And so we're able to give like real data of what works, what doesn't work. And so then it also comes back to the donors and saying, We are really good stewards of this money and it's the the transparency is everywhere. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if there's donors that want to invest in only like certain types of career path programs because they're higher impact, again, s put myself in the shoes of a donor. I'd probably want to make sure my my dollars go towards what is moving the needle most and having the most positive impact. speaker-0: Yeah, there are su the donors can designate based on our technology. We have donors that say I only wanna donate to those that are going in the healthcare field. Yeah. Or I only wanna donate to educational pathways. And then we give them reports on what those educational pathways and what the progress is and where where they enroll, where they graduate from. So we can do that all based on our database. speaker-1: Yeah. Now I'd love to hear some stories of the survivors that have gone through your programs and share s some of the like before you guys, after Empower Network. 'Cause I and from the other organizations that we've interviewed as well, they've just started to build an ⁓ an an amass in an awesome alumni network as well of people that have gone through it and just share their story with others. speaker-0: Yeah, I can tell you I mentioned that we have this video coming out. So I spent some time recently in California with many survivors and the one that really there's a every st every story could stick out. But the one story that really sticks out to me is a story of a survivor who was trafficked for fourteen years and was working as a care a caretaker. She was like a paid Caregiver from the state of California, when it go into people's homes and take care of them. And she hated it. But it was the only source of income. And she's a single mom. And she went to a career night. And one of the careers that was on display at a table was a welder. She put this mask on and she was like, something came over me. And she was nominated to our program from the table that that was one of our partners that had the mask, nominated to our program, and We ended up supporting her in her first like welding mask, her first welding outfit, her certificate program. She's now part of the Iron Workers in California. And her goal is to become like a a master welder and certif get all the certificates she wants. You'll see in this video like of her welding in her garage. And she's like on this career trajectory. She's part of a union now. She's tells us stories w I got to know her very well, tells us stories. She's the only woman on the work site all the time. She's gotta earn all the certificate keeps earning more certificates to get the next level welders. But like that's the that's exactly who Empowered Network is. Like someone who, yeah, I actually know what I want to do. I know how to get there now. These are the certificates I need. This is how much it costs. This is the equipment that no one else can pay for. This is the career path I go on. Now she's forty six. So that's exactly where we would come in and partner with her and say, like, we want to be your partners in this. And there's no version in history that she's not gonna accomplish everything that she wants to do because she was, yes, sign me up for who can be my accountability partner and I'm doing all of this. That's a really cool story. That's the most recent story. One of our beginning stories, but I was the only person that worked here in the beginning. So I was founder. So I would travel from Connecticut to New York. And our program has our mission has never changed. Our program keeps evolving. But we had the empowerment programs right from the get go. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: And so one of the the first four women we got money for, I still remember all of the first four women. So if that was the last woman I heard the story from, one of the first women I heard the story from, trying to pick pick which one to tell you, because there's so many of the first. But this this woman was also living in a shelter for I guess 14 years and had finally got a housing voucher because We had made c connections with her to work, it was before COVID, to work at like a wee working spot. Mm-hmm. And so she'd worked long enough to get enough pay stops to be able to get the voucher because she was working under the table before and she couldn't get the voucher and she worked she got the voucher. I'll never forget, like she'd never had an apartment before. Again, I think she was in her late thirties, early forties. And so she was like, I'm gonna need all this furniture and like it was the size of this room was her apartment in New York City. And so we helped pick furniture out, went and we set it all up. And she got a job. She had the job at the the spot and getting her first apartment after fourteen years in the shelter. And just the idea of her looking out the window with a job for the first time. She's not like an amazing fitness instructor. This was ten years ten years ago. But she did all the work, right? We were there to be like, Yeah, it's time for someone to step alongside of you. You have a job now that you can get this voucher for and She still lives in the same apartment. speaker-1: Yeah. Wow. What keeps you going? What keeps you like obviously these stories, but as you progress through your day and through determining the future plans and strategy of Empower Network, what gets you excited? speaker-0: I don't know, it depends on the day and the year. Right. I think I think the the staff are really amazing. Like that there's twelve staff members at Empowered Network that choose to do this work. And it's really hard work. We get to see the best part of humanity after the worst part has happened and be a witness to people opening doors to the beginning, hopefully of like a a great chapter of their lives. But there's still really complex trauma involved every day. Yeah. And still I have twelve people that are like, sign me up for that. So that's really helpful. It gets me through a lot. I think the other thing that there's so many good people that kind of contradict all of the the bad things that are happening. If you think about like traffickers meeting in one room and figuring out how to make more money and exploit people, I'm like, I get to meet somebody who was like, ⁓ I see you. How can I help? I see that you need more access here. How can I help? And not poor survivors, poor you, ⁓ you run a charity. It's like, no, I actually see. I'm gonna be part of that solution. So like just how many good people there are is awesome. That speaker-1: Is that how you 'cause that this is a common question I usually ask, especially with organizations and executive directors that that do see and er and cross paths with the worst parts of humanity. Is how do you still stay come out of that not going to bed, having nightmares, or just being a negative person all the time? And it sounds like you're just focusing on the opposite, the good people in the world. ⁓ one of your ways to speaker-0: Yeah, it's there definitely there's definitely times and phases that there'll be days that I'll be like pretty low and I came home from a conference in June and it was it was with the Epstein survivors and about pornography and all everything happening online and no one protecting our children and it took me days to not think about all the terrible things that are happening right now and continuing to happen for profit. And all the things that that means that's happening to children. And then I can always think about what my first supervisor said ever to me. And then she was like, Hey, turn off NPR. She was like, Why don't you just focus on right now what you can do? She's like, You got that person for us, like the other side of the screen, or sometimes when we meet in person. You got that in front of you. You just focus on that. And so that's helpful to me because that other stuff, like our staff one time when we Maybe this was like a year ago when we were started talking about AI and like how are we gonna use AI? And we had a bunch of staff like up in arms. I'm never using AI. We're the energy that is causing people. And my response to them was just like, you can choose that battle. Go for fight for that then. I don't disagree with what you're saying. I was like, we're not doing that here. It was like we have we're doing what we're doing here. And so I think that's my sanity. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. And especially with ki both of us have kids. With kids too, I'm sure this this type of work hits a little bit different. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-0: I point I've got two Dange boys that they're they definitely know what I do. And then like after especially after that conference, I like like to my thirteen year old, like you're never getting ro box ever again, just so you speaker-1: Ever again. Yeah. No more robots. speaker-0: Yeah. And then he literally he was playing lacrosse with a college boy we live in a college boy down the road and I was like, I'm going to meet him right now He's like What? He's like this is mortifying I like He's a predator. speaker-1: Yeah. Just all the negative like thoughts possible would just flood you. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. We same with us. We don't watch the news. We have no TVs in our house. We have a projector that we bust out when we want to watch Disney movies. Three and five year old not getting a phone until whenever social media, like all those things. Yeah. speaker-0: Never do it. speaker-1: Yep. And I'm wondering we've gone this way with this this so yeah, we'll probably have to pull back a little bit, but yeah, I'm very bullish on that. It's just do they really knit? Back in our days, we were just outside for fift twelve hours a day. So yeah, the electronic yeah, it keeps you connected to friends and communicating, but but yeah, what's the trade off? Yeah. speaker-0: I know. It's terrible. I have a thirteen and an eighteen year old. And yeah. It's a lot especially my thirteen year old, it's a lot of his world. And I I hate it. speaker-1: Yeah. What what so I guess this is another good question. What changes have you made or philosophies as a parent have you developed because of your day job and your day work? speaker-0: Yeah, I think both my husband and I are believe that before I had children, you put maybe you feel like this too, I like, I'll never raise boys and girls differently. Yeah. I am like all my husband is too like all over our boys about everything. About consent, about the way everything, the way they treat me, the way they treat every female, the way even if they joke about anything. Not my my girl's sixth. She's not in the picture yet with that, but and they know it. And they're white boys, so they know they're like, here we go, talk to me about being my privileged my privileged whiteness. And I'm like, Yeah, that's what we're gonna talk about right now. And I don't know if that's because my work. I think my work comes out a lot. At a later time, I'll tell you a very funny story about when my sixth grader, I thought, was looking at something on his computer and he wasn't, and I introduced him to it before before he was looking at it. Because I was convinced he was hiding something from me. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. speaker-0: think their healthy thing is yeah. I know what I do. ⁓ I know it's ⁓ speaker-1: Which that alone means that they probably search what trap and realize that yeah, the percentage of women that are trapped versus men ⁓ in the men perpetrators. speaker-0: Yeah. Their teachers have told me. They're like, I heard what you do. I'm like, ⁓ what have they sold I do? They're like, You work with survivors of human trafficking. Yeah. You help them reach financial independence. I'm like, they know that. So I was like, okay, they're listening. speaker-1: They're yeah, they're proud of their mom. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So philosophies that you developed, anything notable as a parent going through this other than hammer down on on speaker-0: ⁓ I think aren't you aren't we all just complete failures? I'm like, I'm just doing everything wrong. Yeah. I my it's hard. I don't know if there's any specific philosophies that I would even know are philosophies that we're doing. Yeah. speaker-1: Yep. I think that's par like parents that we have in our neighbour our neighborhood too, seeing the differences of parenting styles, that has helped me to know what I want to do and maybe what I don't want to do. It's it's helpful seeing other parents doing their styles 'cause I've learned a ton just through that. And of course all the kids are at different ages. It's hard to understand how quickly kids mature and at what point does it make sense to introduce certain things and teach certain things. But yeah, that's the journey. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, it is a journey. It's a big journey. speaker-1: So future of Empowered Network, looking to the next five one, three, five, seven years, what do you hope to see? speaker-0: Yeah. I think we're ten years in now. So we started in well, almost ten years in. We started in twenty seventeen. And funding landscape cheap keeps changing in the nonprofit world between like generations of wealth and the political climate or w it's always gonna keep changing. And so I think for us is I just wanna preserve our mission because there's such a gap there. And so I think we're at such a a crucial point in like We have to preserve our mission. We have to make sure this is available for survivors because it's so important and so needed. And that we have seen survivors walk into this door of opportunity and never look back and being like, Yes, I'm at this crossroads. I want this accountability. I want this advocate. I want this partnership. And they take off and they just have I can't wait the lives that they lead afterwards just because they were given an opportunity. So I don't want that to ever go away. And I want that to happen for more survivors. So we're always talk how to scale. I think that we're at this juncture of we serve this year I think we'll probably serve about two hundred survivors. Last year we served a hundred and fifty. We have grown organically about thirty percent every year, which is a lot. And what is where are where will we be in ten years if we want to continue? I think when we did an audit, we could probably serve about fifteen hundred, we think is what how many survivors would need our program every year. So when we think about where Empowered Network will be, I think the most important thing for me is how do we preserve our mission the most? And then everything else is second. And so however else to do that is on the table for me is great. Do we get pivotal funding to do that? And do we get this catalytic funding to do that? speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Do we go with somebody else to do that? What is the best way to serve survivors in this capacity and serve the survivors that need our program the most? So I don't know the answer. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. People that are listening and inspired and want to get engaged, what type of engagement do you look for and how could they get engaged? speaker-0: Yeah, I think besides financial support, of course, because we're all privately funded. We're not all privately funded now. We have some little bit of government support. I think access, I think because our program runs on access for education and employment specifically, it's not like for us, it's not you don't need to know the definition of human trafficking. You don't need to be like, ⁓ I could never listen to one of those stories. You just need to be like, There's somebody out there that's never been exposed. Or doesn't have the access to things that you might have access to every single day. Yeah. And then if you're willing to help open that opportunity, that's where I think the most valuable connections come in. So whether that's an invitation to somebody at a corporation who could help with employment connections and employment opportunities, especially if they're national, or if they're connections, we've had some connections to like donor advised funds who have lists of high wealth individuals who are like, ⁓ when they're interested in human trafficking, they want to know about an empowered network. That would be awesome that we could get on that. But it's act it's really access to opportunities that we're looking for. Even volunteerism. Like the reason that we have a CRM, like we have Salesforce as our CRM, is because a volunteer has v donated his time since day one to keep and maintain that. Same with our marketing, same with our website. So and again, I don't know if they know totally what human trafficking is or not. But they know that there are people out there who have been marginalized and are vulnerable and need a a help up and they're like, I can do that. So I think it's like looking inside of being like, what can you offer? And do you want to offer it? And what are the resources? What are the time? And putting that on the table I think is what the most valuable thing is. Cause then it's not like I need a hundred thousand dollars, which we do, by the way. But it's more like, Wow, I have this to offer. And we have this that we need. So it's a it's more of a match. It's more of like a mutual beneficial partnership than anything else. speaker-1: Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. Is there anything that we missed that maybe you wanna to mention or call out before we wrap up? I feel like we've covered a lot. speaker-0: I think that we're just we're really proud. We operate in partnership with all other anti trafficking organizations. We wouldn't exist without them. They nominate to our organization, so there's zero version that we don't exist. We don't exist in isolation. We exist with all the other anti trafficking organizations and we don't exist without the hundreds of community members and donors who see us and show up for us day in and day out. And there's hundreds more to serve. Right. And that's you want to acknowledge all the work that's been done. And you want to celebrate all that. And when you make time to celebrate it, and then you want to like, and look who's behind waiting. Let's do more. Let's celebrate more and find a way to make it more sustainable. We did just come out with a video that's coming out September fifteenth. So we're gonna s like launch that September fifteenth. That's our first time ever to have a video on who Empowered Network is. And then I think just Showing up. I think showing up for a community that people are scared of and I think are viewed as what did one survivor say to me? She's like people always view me as what's the word when you're like a speaker-1: Not a victim or speaker-0: No, she viewed it. I totally forget the word. It's like she was ⁓ I forget, but she she was basically she was like, I'm radioactive or something like that. She was like, They're so scared of me because they're so scared I'm gonna say something about my past or that because I'm a survivor and she's like, I'm just a person that had a terrible thing happen to me. She's like, I'm just like anybody else that had a terrible thing h I'm not not just like anybody else, it's a terrible thing that happened to them. But we're speaker-1: Human, you could talk to me. I'm not gonna bite. Yeah. speaker-0: And we're all in different shoes and different chairs at different moments in our lives and we just all want to show up for each other. So I can easily be in someone else's shoes and chair and I will need help. And so I think the more we recognize that and value that and realize that's who we are as a a human people, that the better we'll all be. And that's what I mean. What can we look inside and be like, ⁓ I can offer this now. I might need something later. That's not reason we give it, but I think that's what that generosity of spirit really means to me. Yeah. speaker-1: Well Christy, thank you so much for your time. And people that are listening will share all the links to to Empowered Network and on their journey to get from that two hundred to fifteen hundred of y'all's ability to serve. It's amazing the work that you're doing. Really appreciate your time and I'm honored to share your story and the work that you all are doing. And thank you for the past ten years and for the next ten and beyond. Awesome. Thank you. speaker-0: All right, thank you so much.