ALIVE’s Third Pillar
ALIVE works to ensure victims and survivors receive, trauma-informed/responsive, culturally appropriate victim-centered service referrals through systemic collaboration.
While we are not a direct service provider, it is our responsibility to closely connect with the community. We know this will bring victims directly or indirectly in our purview. We will be ready to provide exit services and strategies via referral, locally and nationally.
We have begun on the front-end, here in Houston and across the nation, to develop systemic collaborations to this end.
From day one, ALIVE has consulted with survivor leaders on the development of this unique organization and its mission and have a nationally known survivor leader involved in the development of a systemic mechanism used to connect victims and survivors to culturally appropriate services.
Our goal, is to provide confidential referrals to substance use and mental health treatment, supportive housing, family reunification, transportation, childcare, food, and other life stabilizing resources.
ALIVE also addresses “Historical Trauma” resulting from slavery, as an integral part of the Black experience in America. The physical and psychological impact of slavery on the Black American community was and continues to be devastating.
Blacks in America are still healing from many aspects of slavery with one of the most devastating aspects being sexual exploitation. The result of this sexual exploitation is generations of normalizing the objectification of the Black female/male body.
This damaging hyper-sexualization was developed outside the community as an evolution of slavery mentality and accepted inside the Black community. The stigma attached to sex trafficking has historically classified Black and Brown bodies as willing to sell sex in exchange for money, therefore choosing this lifestyle and are nothing more than “prostitutes.” Sex trafficking victims are depicted to be Caucasian, blonde hair and blue-eyed.
Therefore, those in the Black community are looked down upon and shunned, often by the Church, which prevented these victims from seeking help from a historical beacon of hope in the Black community. In many cases when they did seek help from the Church, they were re-exploited.
For healing to occur, it is imperative to remove the stigma, equalize the playing field, revealing what research tells us that it is Black and Brown people who are most often exploited domestically and criminalized, as well.
It is naive to think one can heal a community without recognizing and understanding the cultural barriers that exist within it. Having a community heal itself is not only vital, it is necessary.