How You Can Support Survivors Today

Now that you know, let’s act. Here are a few ways you can support survivors experiencing incarceration and arrest. Keep learning here and join us in showing survivors you believe them. No survivor of trafficking should experience arrest as a result of their trafficking and all survivors who do, deserve and need support!

  1. Advocate for Survivors 

  • Contact your state and local legislators

Let your legislators know you support survivor justice. Here is where you can find your elected Congressional officials. Here is where you can find your state representatives.

Here is a current list of the 18 states that have some form of affirmative defense. It is important to assert in your letter or phone call that you support a trafficking victim centered affirmative  defense that allows for all crimes to be considered.When writing to your representative, it is important to know the status of your state’s affirmative defense laws for trafficking victims.

Here  is a sample Letter.

  • Sign existing petitions for incarcerated survivors

Petitions, such as those for Tiffany Simpson and Jessica and Jordan Hampton, are key tools to let state prosecutors and legislators know that there is a broad national community who knows about and supports the freedom of survivors. 

You can sign Tiffany’s petition here and Jessica and Jordan’s petition here

Please share these petitions online with a note about why YOU are supporting incarcerated survivors. 

 2. Support survivors

On May 1, show the world that #youcandoanythinginadress (or a tie) by running Dressember’s virtual 5K in your neighborhood. Dressember will equip you with resources and step-by-step instructions to make your 5k a success.  All contributions go directly to supporting survivors.

  • Give to Survivors

Whether survivors are currently incarcerated or recently released, they need support to truly become the person who they were always meant to be. You can support their healing, legal freedom and life in and out of prison. Please make a contribution here. Absolutely 100 percent of your contribution goes directly to supporting survivors through wellness supplies, therapy, legal services, access to educational supplies and more. 

  • Write to Survivors

If you would like to write a letter of support to Tiffany, Jessica, Jordan or Hope, we would love to help you out. Simply click here to access a letter form. Our team will quickly review your letter to ensure it is a good fit for a survivor and then either pass it onward to the survivor you have written (with information on how to write you back) or respond to you with constructive feedback on how to edit your letter to be a better fit for survivors. Once a survivor has received your letter, it will be up to the two of you to decide when and how you will proceed in communications. We will need to advise all parents and guardians of survivors prior to sharing letters with minors, however.

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Fecha Talaso

Fecha Talaso is the co-founder and director of partnerships at Karana Rising. Fecha  is a certified victim advocate using her eight  years of advocacy and direct service work to cultivate staff growth and development to advance the mission of Karana Rising and the individual goals of the survivors on our team.

Fecha works alongside the executive director to develop and advance policies and programs supporting survivor justice and and healing, including external earned media and owned media consumption. Fecha is responsible for creating and managing Karana Rising’s communications, website, virtual survivor mentoring and workshop portal and social media channels. She is responsible for the development and management of programmatic and development partnerships. 

Prior to joining Karana Rising, Fecha was the prevention education specialist at FAIR Girls, a nonprofit that serves young women survivors of human trafficking, and residential counselor for FAIR Girls’ Vida Home. 
 
Longing for a day when justice is perfect with a deeper international lens from which to view the health and humanitarian challenges facing people around the globe,wealth of experience and practical experience in development and a deep belief in the power of partnership and collaboration and transformation of vulnerable populations and communities at large has continually reenergized the urge to change the world in her own little ways. She dares to dream and passionately to fight criminal and social injustices, as well as retrogressive practices that marginalize vulnerable populations like women and children. She can be reached at fecha@karanarising.org

Andrea Powell

Andrea Powell is the co-founder and executive director at Karana Rising. Ms. Powell is Karana Rising’s chief liaison to the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force where she co-chairs the training and outreach committee.

 Prior to founding Karana Rising, Andrea was the founding executive director of FAIR Girls, a nonprofit that serves young women survivors of human trafficking. Ms. Powell is also the Director of Survivor and Youth Engagement at Unitas. In 2014, Andrea led the FAIR Girls’ team to create and open the only safe home for young survivors of human trafficking in the nation’s capital area. Andrea has led crisis response teams where she assisted law enforcement and other front-line responders in finding and recovering survivors of human trafficking who were later offered safety and supportive services. She received her Masters of European Union Law at the Center for European Integration Studies from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany and Bachelor of Arts and Science in International Relations from Texas State University. Andrea’s writing has been published in the New York Times, CNN, PBS, Huffington Post, Marie Claire, MSNBC, NBC THINX, Thompson Reuters, FAIR Observer, and the Washington Post. She also sits a private consultant for Freedom Fwd and Project Explorer. She can be reached at andrea@karanarising.com