 Welcome to Aloha United We Stand. I'm your host, Krasagin Aldo, and welcome to the Aloha United Way spotlight with its non-profit partners, the organizations, and people making a difference here in Hawaii. And you're watching us on ThinkTech Hawaii, and you can always join the conversation on Twitter at ThinkTechHI. Now, today, we are going to talk about sex trafficking. We're going to talk about young people, girls, victims. And sometimes this talk is uncomfortable, but you know what, we have to talk about this because it takes power from the people who are doing this, because power back to the victims. And these are people who are trying to help these victims, these girls recover and be part of society again. So today, I'm joined by Ho'Ola Napua, and I have Jody Eleon, and I have Tammy Batanga from the organization, and I'll have them introduce themselves, tell us about the work that you do, some of the background, and how you're addressing these issues. Hi, Jo, how are you today? Oh, great. Glad to be here. Thank you. So can you please talk about Ho'Ola Napua and what you're doing and how this started, please? Well, Ho'Ola Napua's mission is to help the victims of sex trafficking with health, education, advocacy, and reintegration into the community. And our original mission started with a plan to build a home for these girls. These young girls aged between 11 and 18 years old, and we're calling that home Pearl Haven. Pearl Haven. Yes. And Pearl Haven is a long-term residential care facility that will house these girls for at least a year where they'll receive complete holistic trauma therapy to help them heal from the experiences they had while they were being sex trafficked. Now, what stage is Pearl Haven at right now, Jo? Well, Pearl Haven is in the development phases, and we have been awarded a site from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and the site is 12 acres on the North Shore, and there's a facility there. It's an older building that has fallen into disrepair to say the least, but it's 20,000 square feet. So it's ideally located because it's in a very healing space, and we will ultimately be able to renovate the home and accommodate 32 girls at one time. 32, and these would be 32 girls who have experienced something that's truly awful. It's something that, again, we... it's difficult to talk about, but it must be because these are human rights crimes. Let's not beat around the bush. These are crimes. These are people. These are our daughters out there. When did this organization start? And who makes it up? Are you part of a partnership, or what organizations are helping together or partnering? Well, this started as a concept and a dream of Jessica Munoz, who is our president and founder. In 2009, she started the Justice Project. She became aware of this while she was doing her master's degree in nursing, and she found out that sex trafficking was a huge problem in Hawaii, and she determined that she was going to do something about it. So she allied herself with a mainland organization for a couple of years and started the outreach and to raise awareness and to let people know and to find a way to build a place or to provide a home for some of these girls. In 2013, I joined the organization in 2012, and we decided that we needed to be a Hawaii-based 501C3. So we formed the organization, Huala Napua, and we're completely independently managed so we can show full fiscal accountability and be a local company. So that was 2013, and we've been extremely active in the educational outreach and awareness business since then, but with the purpose of ultimately building this home and raising the funds. What sort of outreach are you doing? Awareness. Tammy talked a little bit about that since that's her title. So Tammy, why just know how you're helping here? So with outreach, we go into schools, high schools. We've talked to over 4,000 children in the public and private schools. We go in and we do prevention awareness, so teaching them about, like, what does it look like on social media when somebody's trying to groom you into the life or what does it look like when somebody is just trying to entice you or what does it look like when you get stuck in a place where you shouldn't be. So we get in there and just give them that awareness education. And we also do a lot of outreach with organizations, law enforcement, DHS, different organizations that are actually out there giving the services that are needed right now. We also do awareness coupled with fundraising. So that's a lot of the things that I do. I get to do a gala and an off tournament. And you had mentioned at the high school level, and is that the age that these people are targeting? And you had mentioned social media. So these are the, you know, that particular group of, what is it, 14 to 18 year olds? Is that something that they are really looking at? So right now we have, I don't know that we've gone into any middle schools, do you know, Jody? Yes, we've done a lot of middle school outreach. And the number is actually amped up because we did a lot more and it's now over 6,500 children. But we have to start in seventh and eighth grade because we've targeted very young, 11, 11 to 14 is the average age that the girls come into this. Very vulnerable, not really Akamai. This young teenage girl is very, if she has any insecurities in her life and a need for love, she's vulnerable to a trafficker who's out there looking for young girls to put into his stable and to introduce them to this world and to make him the most important person in her life and to provide the love that she's missing. So the young girls really need the education. And we had a training last week and from someone from the mainland, that's very proactive in this business. And they said we have to now start thinking about fifth and sixth grade. Fifth and sixth grade. Is this something that is what they're discovering worldwide or specifically here in Hawaii that now this age that you mentioned, like 11, and going younger, is that something we have to really look at? Yes. It's scary. That is scary. And you had mentioned, I think, Tammy, you mentioned some governmental agencies. How does law enforcement help? How does these organizations help? And how do you partner with them? So what it is for Hole in a Pool is that we will provide services for them after they've been recovered. But we need to know what we're looking for. So we need to know what does that look like? What does a sex trafficked girl look like? So when we're doing an assessment when a girl gets picked up on a drug charge or she's a runaway or she's got shoplifting or whatever kind of crime she may be picked up on, if you don't know what you're looking for and she could be a sex trafficked victim, that's what we help to bring that awareness to law enforcement and help them to identify these girls. So sometimes these crimes, whether it be shoplifting or theft, they can be hooked up. They can be also sex trafficking victims, but you need to know what you're looking for. Yeah. And that's the thing is that, no matter when you have an underage girl come into your custody, there should be an assessment. There should be the questions being asked. Did anyone ask you to sell yourself? Have you traded yourself? Have you ever given yourself up for a place to live? Have you ever been given money for a sex act? So those are the kind of questions that we have to be asking because sometimes they might not even realize that what's going on with them, that they're even being trafficked. So if they don't know they're being trafficked, how can they get services to help them recover from being trafficked? And you two have mentioned, I know, Jodi, this is a period of time in these girls' lives where they're vulnerable. They're still trying to figure out who they are and they might have someone who's powerful coming in and making them outlandish promises or using their power against them. When you do the identification, when they come to you, how do you folks help orient them and what are the things that we must know as people who are trying to help our girls recover? What must we know about them and how do we help them? I think the first thing to understand about this business is that it's very large. There's a lot of segments to this business and we are not actually in the recovery and rescue business and we don't have a short-term place to put them. We're looking at the long-term recovery of the girls' lives. So when we're working in the awareness and the education is to let people know what they can find. For instance, when I'm working in one of the large high schools here and bringing awareness to the school and they had a huge assembly, the counselors and the teachers clicked and said, oh, that's what's wrong with those girls. The behavior, when they talked about the behavior, they understood all of a sudden what was the problem with these girls. So that kind of awareness means that now they can step in and alert. There's a process now to alert either the FBI or social service agency or some of the advocates that are out there to find a way to get to these girls. And most of these girls aren't going to volunteer and come in and say, oh, I'm having a problem. So it's just at least a ways of awareness of the girl that's having a problem. And when she is ready to get help, there are places for her to go. And then chain ultimately. But when they do recover these girls, what we do offer is a mentoring program. And we've been very active mentoring and Tammy's a great mentor informally for several years now. And this year we decided to make a very formal program. And this is the Starfish Mentoring Program. Yes, it is. And that program is where we can bring help where someone's been identified and assessed, but there's nowhere to put them yet. So what we do is we offer trained, qualified, vetted volunteers who are non-professionals but are going to provide a non-judgmental friendship for the girls. We need to take a break. When we come back, I'd like to talk more. Let's talk more about the Starfish Program. The origins of that really interestingly named program. So right now, learn more about the other great shows and the other great hosts here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, I'm Stacey Hayashi with the Think Tech Hawaii show Stacey to the Rescue, highlighting some of Hawaii's issues. You can catch it at Think Tech Hawaii on Mondays at 11 a.m. Aloha, see you then. Hi, I'm Keely Akina, President of the Grass Root Institute. I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. for Ehana Kako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government, and society. See you Mondays on Ehana Kako at 2 o'clock p.m. Until then, I'm Keely Akina. Aloha. Hello, my name is Crystal. Let me tell you my talk show. I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well-balanced attitude in life. Join me. Welcome back to Aloha United We Stand. I'm your host, Chris Aguinaldo. And today we're talking about sex trafficking, girls who are victims. But there's an organization here in Hawaii trying to help in recovering these girls, these victims of these crimes. Again, this is Aloha United We Stand and this is Ho'ola Napua. We have a couple of representatives from the organization talking about what they're planning to do to help our girls back to transition into society. And before the break, Joni, Tammy, we're talking about the Starfish Program, the Starfish Mentoring Program. That's an interesting name for a program. Can you let us know what it represents, what it means and why that's a wonderful symbol for helping our girls? So Starfish Mentorship Program came from a story about a little boy who was walking across the beach and there were millions of Starfish laying, dying on the beach. And he started throwing them back in the ocean, one by one by one. And this old man came by and he said, what are you doing? What are you doing picking up all those Starfish and throwing them back in? You can never make a difference in any of their lives. And the little boy picked up one and he threw it in. He said, well, I made a difference in that one. And that's where we are today because across the nation, there are thousands of girls that are being trafficked, underage girls that are being trafficked. In our own community, I would say there's hundreds of girls being trafficked. Here in Hawaii. Here in Hawaii that are undercover, that we don't know, that we can't see, that we haven't even touched on them yet, but they're there. And if we don't know what we're looking at, then we're not going to be able to see them. Tammy, I know that this is a cause really close to your heart. Could you let us know why you're so passionate about this? So personally, I didn't know that I was trafficked at age 15 when I was being trafficked. I didn't realize that that was what was going on with me because for one thing, we didn't use the term trafficked in the 70s or the 80s. It's a relatively new term. And so I was at a women's conference and I heard these people talking about sex trafficking and I was like, what the heck is sex trafficking? And so I went in, went to the breakout session, listened, and I laughed and I was like, wow, unbelievable. And then the next year I went back again and they were still talking about sex trafficking. And so I went to the breakout session again and I was like, oh my gosh, they're still talking about it. And this time I didn't just go home and say, oh, they're still talking about it. I decided to get involved and so I talked to them. And then one thing led to another and I got involved and I brought it to my community, showed a movie. Then it was like go to training. And then it was like, hey, you guys, this happened to me when I was 15 and everybody was like, what? And this is here in Hawaii? It was in Hawaii. It was in Waikiki. I was in the foster care system. So for lack of time, and you can read my story in numerous places, just Google it. But who would ever think that that would be the work that I get to do today based on that incident that happened to me back in the 70s. But I come out of the foster care system and so I got caught up in trafficking in Waikiki when I was 15 years old. But thankfully I have been a long journey of recovery. It didn't just happen. It took about 20 years for me to actually recover from that, just staying in the life back and forth in the game, not knowing who I was, not knowing my identity, not being empowered to do anything different. And so for me, that's why I stand today for these kids that don't have a voice yet because I want to empower them to have a voice for them to be able to say that they are valuable and that they can do anything that they want to do. They're very resilient. When you've been oppressed in a situation and you've had to survive through that situation, you become very resilient and you're very resourceful. And so these girls are very strong. But we need to give them the tools. We've got to remind them that you're there, that you're there, that we're all here together. Absolutely. How do they respond to that? I think I've read that at the time. You really didn't know what was happening to you. Yeah. I just thought I made a bad choice one day and found myself. Being trafficked doesn't mean you get taken out of state but I actually did get taken out of state. And so, yeah, I just realized one day that this was happening to me that I had made a bad choice. And so today when I meet up with the girls, because I do get to mentor them, it's not always a good experience for them to get taken out of that lifestyle. For them, sometimes they feel like they've just been removed and what else, what's better for them. But we can give them a hope. We can show them there is a better life for them. And that's part of the mentoring process. Yeah. But how many people are involved and how many of our girls are you helping? So right now we're just getting off, we're still training up mentors. So I can't really give you actual numbers. I would say we could say that we are mentoring just under 10 girls. That's all I could say. I can't really give an exact number. But that's like the starfish. These are 10 starfish that we've taken out. They are ours and our arms again. These are 10 people that are getting addressed in help. Now for the Pearl Haven. Again, let's talk about Pearl Haven. That's what, three dozen? 32. 32 girls can be part of that. We talked about the facility on the North Shore. What types of things, what types of activities, what kind of people can they meet once Pearl Haven is online? And when do you hope it will be there? The activities will be holistic activities. There will be education. We'll have on-site education. Whether we do it as a charter school or as a subject of the part of the DOE, we haven't quite decided exactly how. They will be schooling. They don't leave the sites full residential. We're going to have equine therapy. Oh, that's horses. Yeah. They love horses. Art therapy, music therapy, dance, group therapy, individual therapy, therapists will come there. So in most cases, especially as they first come in, they will be basically treated. Everything will be on-site. We'll have animals, puppies, goats, maybe goat therapy, it's supposed to be a good one, too. So the entire holistic scheme of healing will be addressed. We'll have doctors and physicians, doctors will be coming in and nurses will be available. So they'll be fully treated physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. So, and just the floor, we're still creating some of the things we want to do. We're going to have a greenhouse so they can learn how to grow and cook and do work things with the land. And we keep coming up with new things that we can do with them. How has the response been from the community? It's actually been very good. You've been meeting folks in the community? Yeah. And we've been actually fairly well funded from the standpoint that we've sustained for two years. We have a lot of skeleton staff, but we have enough to keep the organization going. And we've started our capital campaign and we just got a nice donation from one of the churches here. And Castle Foundation has been a supporter for two years. And we have a lot of people that have expressed a very keen interest in supporting us. And we pretty much have to prove that we can pull it off, that we can do it, that we can sustain it. So we have about a million dollars worth of county and state grants committed to us to start the facility and to do the engineering. We've got all the permits we need. All the land permits were done pro bono. So we're ready to go with the design and then to proceed with the building documents and construction. Next one. No. How can people help? What are you looking for? More folks to do this sort of volunteer work for you? What kind of services do you need? Financial donations? What would help you the most right now? I think, well, at this point, we're always actively recruiting volunteers. And I'm using our Tammy here. Don't worry. I'm making Jody talk. If you go on our website, you can sign up as a volunteer or a supporter. We have two campaigns. We have the capital campaign, which is for large donors who want to submit funds for the building. And we send people over to talk to them about it. And then we have a thousand from a thousand campaign, which we... Oh, ha! Good job. University of Hawaii football team under Rolovich is going to kick butt this season. In case you didn't understand me, University of Hawaii football team is going to kick butt under Rolovich this season. So be sure to follow us on Think Tech Hawaii and Yobachi Top. I'll be at every game. And remember, hello, ha! Hello. This is Martin de Spang. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is called Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. And it's going to be on Think Tech Hawaii from downtown Honolulu on Tuesday after noon's 5 p.m. And we're going to talk about to make architecture more inclusive on the islands, which is one of the definitions of humane, which is being tolerant of many people, of nature, of many other influences. So we're going to have some great guests, like today's guest, for example, my collaborator, David Rockwood, who is the author of the awesome manifestation of humane architecture in the background. So see you on Tuesdays, 5 p.m. I look forward to. Welcome back to Aloha, United We Stand. And Jodi, thank you so much. And Tammy, sharing her story, showed us that the victims of sex trafficking, this human rights atrocity, it just happens right in front of us. So I really do thank Tammy for her time. And the time that you and I have left, we were talking about how wonderful it has been to have so many community supporters. There are people who have given you donations, pro bono services for Pearl Haven out in the North Shore, for this recovery home for 32 victims of sex trafficking. What other support can the community give? Do you need volunteers? Do you need more funding, or do you need more people to come in and talk? Well, we have a full volunteer roster, and what we really are asking people to do is go online and sign up. And when you sign up, you can indicate what area of interest you might want to volunteer in. And we're saying volunteer is what your core skill is. I'm a developer, I'm developing the site. We have accountants, we have graphic design people, database people. So there's a lot of opportunities, so just tell us what your skills are and what you want to do. When you go online, you can sign up for our Starfish Support Program, which is, it's not a thousand from a thousand, which is one of our midstream campaigns, which is a thousand dollars from a thousand organizations or people or whatever, a year. And that's kind of supporting the operations. We also have a $30 or $1 a day campaign, called our Starfish Campaign, where people can sign up and we're saying, then bring in five more of your friends, so build on it. So we have a lot of ways where people can contribute at different levels, whatever they're comfortable with. If people are interested in the capital campaign, we'll put them together with that team. But we are trying to keep our operating costs down, so when people can come in and contribute valuable services, it's fantastic, it really helps us. So we're going out to bid now for our engineering services to design the project, and we will be paying for that. But what we're saying to people, as we design the work, we'll be going out and saying this is what the building's going to need, furnishing fixtures and equipment, and perhaps they can donate or give us a discount on some of their things. And so we'll be looking for a lot of help, and our website will outline what that kind of, what is needed, how much pipe we're going to need, what are the physical needs of the plant. So there'll be a lot more coming up, and so staying online with us means you'll get the email, and you'll see periodically what we're looking for. So they can log in, and the website, it's been on our crawl. There's the website that they can check out. So please check out their website, and you can sign up again for newsletters. You can contact the staff, send an email and say, I can do this. Right. Can I help you out with this? Exactly, and we'll track it, and someone will get back. So we have a really good system of tracking with people that are interested in volunteering. We also do a lot of grants. You know, almost every organization in business seems to have some kind of a foundation or a grant. So small grants, large grants, whatever, and people say, oh, my company has a grant. People that are awarding grants want to know which one of their employees are interested in or involved in the organization. So we're always saying, we'll tell us what your organization has and how we can get involved with their grant program. So there's a lot of creative ways for people to get involved. And again, it's really, this is for the girls. This is for the girls. These are our daughters here. Absolutely. And again, it's something that we don't talk about a lot. It's something that sometimes you don't see. But having a home, this Pearl Haven through the Starfish program, it gives them a place to try to be themselves again, be themselves again. Come back to who they were. One of the hardest phone calls I took a couple of years ago was a father whose daughter had gotten involved with a boyfriend. And she'd run away from home twice. And he said, she's really good girl. We have a good family. There's nothing wrong here. But I know she's not going to stay home. I need a place to send her. That's the call we're trying to answer. And that is a need that we have here in Hawaii. That's a need. It crosses every socioeconomic group. That's the most important thing to understand. No one is immune from this. If you have a cell phone in your hand, you can be a target of a pamphlet. Jody, thank you again for your time. We've been talking with Ho'ola Ngapua about girls, sex trafficking here in Hawaii, but also this wonderful place called Pearl Haven that they hope to come online to help these victims adjust back to society. Please check out think tech Hawaii's website and our Twitter feed. We'll have a link to their website so you can learn how you can help them. And for think tech Hawaii and Aloha United Way, thank you for watching. Goodbye.