The group I do a lot of volunteering with received a $15,000 grant today. We are Stand Against Trafficking, an anti human trafficking group. We have about 8 hard core members and about 8 others that help out sometimes, and we usually run on about a $3,000 per year budget, so this will make a great difference.

We do presentations to local civic and church groups, we put on at least 4 community events each year such as special film screenings with a discussion afterwards, and we have started getting appropriate, easy to implement educational materials into the hands of school counselors and other teachers in local school districts.

With the new money, we plan to put on at least 4 one or two days training events with outside speakers, one each for local law enforcement personnel, healthcare workers, prosecutors, and social workers. The trainings will cover the changing face of human trafficking and methods to better identify victims and recognize traffickers. We will also buy more education packages to continue distributing to the local school districts. We are into 8 since last July, there are 21 more, counting the parochial schools, in our area.

It has been a good day.