Weekly Update

Our office was pretty busy the past couple of weeks. See what you’ve been a part of…or missed out on:

  • Derri, along with Margie Quin of TBI, fielded questions at a large law enforcement conference following the screening of the documentary by You Have The Power called “No Girl’s Dream”.
  • Derri also met with our board’s event committee to discuss and plan for our September fundraiser (with a new location this year too!).
  • Last week, Karen presented to the Social Work department at Vanderbilt and at the National Association of Attorney Generals on U.S. and TN human trafficking laws.
  • Shelia is kick starting her director role by speaking at the state senate meeting. She and Derrialso talked to Senator Corker’s D.C. staff about human trafficking in TN last week and did a Q&A session for the documentary screening of “No Girl’s Dream”. On top of all this she has also been meeting with new referrals this week and working with Yvette and Jennifer to find resources for our newest survivor family.
  • Yvette and Jennifer have both been running in and out of the office all week taking survivors to appointments, treatment, helping get a survivor’s child into school, working through job and apartment searching, etc, etc.
  • Our team of three also met with Tiffany and Alex from Jobs for Life to talk about how their services can best be used to serve our survivors. One of our survivors opened up and talked about what she is most interested in learning and developing throughout the next 10 weeks.
  • We were delighted to have t-615 co-founder Emily Landham in the office recently as well. She launched an internship with two of our survivors. This internship will continue bi-weekly as our survivors create handmade jewelry for their Branded collection. We are so thankful for their wonderful partnership!
  • We are grateful to Dave Sagraves and Matt Rucker from Claris Networks who oh so generously donated both a new printer for our office and their IT support to us pro bono. What a huge blessing! 
  • We celebrated with our dedicated volunteers during Volunteer Appreciation Week, hosting an open house for interested and active volunteers to stop in, tour the office, enjoy some refreshments, talk to staff and receive a special thank you note from our survivors.

The #BigPayback is a little more than two weeks. Stay tuned to our Facebook page to learn more about what this giving opportunity means to survivors and why YOU are so important – absolutely essential actually- to our survivors’ success! And stay tuned to our newsletter to read about some great news we are getting ready to unveil at the beginning of the month…

Caitlin Reed