Grand Rapids Congresswoman Hillary Scholten helped secure the $1.2 million investment that will be split to fund a joint task force between Safe Haven Ministries and the Kent County Sheriff’s Office. The grant comes from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime.
“This will increase our capacity, particularly to give more resources to victims of labor trafficking.”
Rachel VerWys is CEO at Safe Haven Ministries, a Grand Rapids-based center committed to preventing and ending relationship abuse and human trafficking. She says this funding will go a long way to help their cause.
“To do the hard work of anti-trafficking means we need more resources, and so this brings a tremendous amount of resources, both for accountability but also for trauma-informed response.”
VanWys says human trafficking is a serious problem not only across the country, but right here in West Michigan, and more needs to be done to educate the public on what to look for in our own communities.
“A few years ago, health care systems didn’t even have a code in their system for to track human trafficking victims, and so how do we also help our community really identify the types of trafficking that are out there and create a coordinated and comprehensive array of services to meet the individual needs of victims.”
