Celebrate Solutions: Transforming Victims into Advocates

By: The GEMS Team;  GEMS was a winner of the Women Deliver 50

GEMS’ Youth Leadership program delivers solutions for commercially sexually exploited and domestically trafficked (CSE) girls and young women, equipping them to reach their full potential. Since its inception in 2003, the program has succeeded in empowering generations of youth survivors of the commercial sex industry to become leaders and advocates to end the commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Understanding that a complex web of factors contribute to girls’ exploitation, including gender-based violence, racism, poverty, and the criminalization of young people, GEMS offers extensive services to help its members develop into healthy, self-sufficient adults and navigate young adult challenges like securing housing and employment, forming healthy relationships, continuing their education, and balancing a budget.

GEMS’ programming has been very successful: of the more than 120 girls and young women who actively engage in GEMS’ programming annually, approximately 75% escape CSE, move in to safe and stable housing, and improve their mental health, and more than 80% reach an educational or vocational goal. In the last year, GEMS has graduated eight Youth Leaders, three of whom are currently participating in GEMS’ paid internships. Four former graduates of the program are now full-time staff members!

At the core of GEMS’ unique survivor-leadership model of empowerment is the Youth Leadership program, which helps participants hone critical-thinking and concrete leadership skills. Selected after a rigorous application process, participants deepen their understanding of the many issues surrounding CSE, as well as build public-speaking and community-organizing skills through outreach, advocacy, and media work. Participants work with staff member of the Youth Outreach Team--also graduates of GEMS’ programming--to form mentorships that undo the divisiveness between women and girls in the commercial sex industry and build rewarding relationships in their place.

Graduates of the Youth Leadership program have been some of the leading voices in the national movement to end CSE, and they have successfully advocated for critical New York State legislation. The Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Children Act, passed in 2008, recognizes that CSE survivors are victims rather than criminals and is now in place in nine other states; Vacating Convictions, passed in 2011, erases prostitution and prostitution-related offenses from the records of girls and women exploited in the commercial sex industry.

Contributing even more to the movement, Youth Leadership graduates reach out to hundreds of at-risk and CSE youth each year in schools, group homes, and detention facilities throughout the city, raising awareness of CSE and ensuring that victims are aware of their service options.

Through consistent engagement with GEMS’ programming, Youth Leadership graduates are armed with the tools needed to overcome the many factors that make it difficult for girls and women to exit the commercial sex industry and thrive as young adults. Through their mentoring roles at the agency, graduates also offer critical inspiration to generations of future leaders to follow in their footsteps.

Photo courtesy GEMS Girls