THE MISSION OF SAVING INNOCENCE IS TO RECOVER AND RESTORE CHILD VICTIMS OF SEX TRAFFICKING THROUGH STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT, SOCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS, SCHOOLS AND OTHER FRONTLINE PROFESSIONALS, WHILE MOBILIZING COMMUNITIES TO PREVENT ABUSE AND INCREASE NEIGHBORHOOD SAFETY.

Saving Innocence's vision is to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children and restore the cultural values of innocence and human worth. Our mission is to rescue and restore child victims of sex trafficking through strategic partnerships with local law enforcement, social service providers, and schools, while mobilizing communities to prevent abuse and increase neighborhood safety. Our hope is that no child who has been a victim of commercial sexual exploitation is left alone to navigate recovery.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Recruiting, training, and supporting resource families who have enough room in their homes and hearts to join one of the children that Saving Innocence cares for with their family.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Two: Develop healthy, competent, and motivated survivor leaders through workshops and partnerships with current community leaders and mentors.

Goal Type: Focus on core programs to achieve mission and scale back on programs not seen as core.

Goal Three: Train and equip all front-line professionals on how to identify and assist victims: law enforcement, social workers, therapists, schoolteachers, judges, district attorneys, etc.

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Describe an investment in leadership

Saving Innocence fully supports the development of leadership through ongoing training workshops, online webinars, courses and providing additional resources for staff such as LinkedIn learning access to courses. Podcasts, online courses, and leadership exercises are incorporated into weekly meetings.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

Saving Innocence partners with the Dept. of Children and Family services, LA County Probation Dept., LAPD, the Sheriff's Dept., the United States Attorney’s Office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements, Homeland Security Investigations, Zoe International, Journey Out, 1736 Family Crisis Center, community leaders, and many other agencies to ensure that we're all working towards the same goal of advocating for youth and ending sex trafficking. Our marketing efforts to raise awareness consists of social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram and more recently TikTok. We collaborate with companies and individuals that want to support the organization and create content for online fundraising and awareness campaigns. In addition to raising awareness, our Task Force Coordinator is actively working with city officials and other non-profit organizations in a collective effort against trafficking. They bring 30 years of experience working in the Sheriff's department in Los Angeles.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing, lockdowns, and business shutdowns, we temporarily shifted some of our in-person client workshops over to virtual meetings. This allowed staff to stay connected with youth while we coordinated the next steps. For our SLAY program, we were able to find outdoor locations and shift to a shorter program length to accommodate the needs of the youth. While we were unable to do prevention groups in care and detention facilities, we were able to pilot an individualized intervention curriculum, and spend more one-on-one time with the youth. We continued to respond to crisis calls, and created life skills workshops in lieu of prevention workshops. Our group programs and services, events, and meetings were shifted to virtual calls. While we were able to shift to Zoom and FaceTime calls at the height of the lockdowns, we recognized the need was still to be in person as much as possible. In addition to staff driving out to clients, we used delivery services to get our clients specific items for basic needs like food and clothing. Our office operations continued through staggered scheduling of necessary in-office work otherwise our administrative staff worked from home. We provided child care reimbursements for our staff who are parents since schools were shut down. We continued to meet face to face as safe and appropriate with all health and safety measures in place, and moved to virtual when needed.