A Hopeful Beginning

For Human Trafficking Awareness Month, NCCASA Anti-Trafficking Program is offering a full schedule of events for Human Trafficking education, resources, and community connection for January and February.

We are grateful for our members and community partners doing the difficult work of advocacy in these deeply unsettling times. Thank you for the work that you do. It does not go unnoticed. 

We welcome the newbys to anti-trafficking work! Your passion, ideas, and desire for training and relationship building fuels HOPE as we show up together.

Thank you all for being in community with us and sharing survivor and program needs. 

You said that you wanted to be connected with others in the human trafficking service field, comfortable in speaking with trafficked survivors, and equipped with skills to address some of the more challenging aspects of anti-trafficking advocacy.  

The following offerings are direct responses to those requests: 

CONNECTED: Human Trafficking Advocacy Community of Practice

We facilitated NCCASA’s FIRST Community of Practice (CoP) in December! It was a time of co-learning how to “do” a CoP and now we’re excited for the next one in February. All practitioners are invited to join!

COMFORTABLE: Let's Talk About Human Trafficking

We started off HTAM with a “101” webinar for new staff and community partners. To your request, the training materials and “cheat sheet” listed conversation prompts to help you feel more comfortable which improves survivor services. Further training will incorporate this goal. 

EQUIPPED: Clearing the Path to Survivor Support and Giving Hope 

This interactive webinar was rooted in creating change through Systems Advocacy. We learned about Teamwork, Resource Sharing and Resource Mapping by applying it to the challenges you identified: limited housing and transportation options, unclear referral practices and gaps in understanding services provided by trafficking-specific programs. We got great feedback and you loved the group activities and the resources that were shared. 

In February we are excited to offer the 2026 Giving Hope Training Cohort that will prepare and equip participants to deliver presentations on the NCCASA Giving Hope Handbook for serving justice-involved youth.

So the NCCASA Human Trafficking Program motto for 2026 is Sharing Hope Through Community.  I think it’s great for this awareness month, and great for the rest of the year!

–Courtney Dunkerton, Human Trafficking Specialist