AREA OF WORK
Child Survivor Empowerment
Survivors are more than their experiences.
WHY IT MATTERS
Empowerment is more than healing.
Healing is one step. Empowerment means helping survivors discover their strengths, return to learning, develop confidence, and create the future they choose.
Survivors are children with strengths, talents, dreams and the potential to lead. We invest in their education, confidence, independence and leadership — and support those who choose to use their voices and lived experience to help protect other children.
How We Help
4 Routes to Thrive
Formal Education
Whether it’s funding scholarships or providing school supplies; we know that returning survivors back to school can help break the cycle of poverty in their families.
Non-Formal Education
By offering life skills training that focuses on everything from emotional regulation to decision-making and values formation emphasizing justice to dignity; we work with children to develop coping skills to overcome life’s challenges and gain confidence.
Vocational Education and Alternative Income Generation
From supporting children and their families to develop work skills to providing opportunities for sustainable employment; we foster self-reliance and help reduce the risk of re-exploitation.
Survivor Leadership
We empower child survivors to understand their rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and, if and when they choose, use their voices and lived experience to raise awareness and advocate for stronger laws, policies, programs, and protections for children.
We support their leadership through training in children’s rights and advocacy, and provide mentorship, networking, and meaningful opportunities to work with decision-makers, researchers, organizations, and the public. In turn, we train these groups to ethically, safely, and meaningfully partner with child survivor leaders.
Empower survivors to thrive.
Our Survivor Empowerment work is made possible through the support of compassionate donors who want to break the chains of exploitation and offer survivors the tools to thrive and give back to our collective fight.
CHILD SURVIVOR EMPOWERMENT HIGHLIGHTS
Training, Platforms, Mentorship, Scholarships and Meaningful Work Experience for Child Survivors
How have we supported survivors and empowered them at the same time? Through our Youth Advisory Squad (YAS) program, of course!
The YAS program is a youth-led scholarship and leadership accelerator fellowship that’s helped transform the lives of over 100 children across Canada, including survivors. Since 2021, children from various backgrounds have received $500 scholarships in exchange for designing and leading their own community project to combat the sexual exploitation of children and participating in a carefully curated curriculum that’s focused on developing their understanding of children’s rights, the sexual exploitation of children, and activism.
As a result of their involvement in the program, children — including child survivors — have given presentations, advocated on Parliament Hill, learned how to protect themselves and others, found a sense of belonging, gained confidence, increased their leadership skills, developed their civic identity, increased their network, accessed employment and more!
Past participants include survivors of different genders, members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, ethnic minorities, and children in foster care. Do you know a child aged 14-17 who’d be great for this program? Learn more.
Explore more of our work
PREVENTION EDUCATION
We can’t wait until a child is harmed to act. Help us bring prevention education to more children.
ADVOCACY
Stand behind children and youth as they call for stronger protections from sexual exploitation.
CHILD SURVIVOR CARE
Stand with child survivors on their journey toward healing and recovery.