Central Minnesota Sexual Assault Center CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

Deliberate actions have been taken to build collaborative connections and relationships with survivor leaders and other professionals within this specific field of work. Focus was specifically put on cultivating relationships with the survivor leaders and professionals within the tribal communities, who are largely overrepresented in being victims of sexual exploitation, and underserved in supportive services. These collaborative steps were instrumental in gaining additional tools and support for our project. The core group of members we now have steering the initiative have decades of experience and a wealth of knowledge unlike any other.

In addition to our expansion of local relationships and connections, we formed collaborative connections with national leaders and professionals. We learned from our national colleagues’ experiences what works, what doesn’t, and how we could use their knowledge to benefit the citizens of Minnesota; especially those most marginalized and impacted by the issue of sexual exploitation within the state. These relationships were important to expanding our vision and the consideration of different avenues to accomplish our end goals of increasing supportive services, creating exit ramps, and limiting criminal liabilities on survivors of the sex trade through legislative and policy changes.

Key lessons learned

Networking, relationship building, and collaboration were key elements in renewing our mission for Safe Harbor for All. Connecting with stakeholders who have been invested in this work for decades and deferring to their expertise has moved the project forward with great momentum. The development of these new relationships was a direct after-effect of prior efforts struggling due to competing stakeholder interests.

We have learned through our national partners the importance of social media presence and branding when reaching out to the general public. Our national partners have played a crucial role in furthering the development of the Safe Harbor for All social media accounts. This has assisted in sharing education with the general public via understandable and easy-to-digest tidbits. Social media is a great tool to expand community support and build political will, and an initiative such as Safe Harbor for All will not be attainable without widespread support from the public. Social media has assisted us in reaching people who may not otherwise be within our circle of influence of community education or professional partnerships.

Reflections on the community innovation process

The element of being resourceful was most important to get to where we currently are in the initiative. After regrouping and rebuilding our core group of members to work on this project, we were able to use contacts, connections, relationships, and inherent knowledge to our advantage to best position ourselves for success. Our group is largely comprised of survivor leaders who have spent years in the work and have cultivated long-standing, trustworthy relationships with other key players in this movement. We have happily been offering whatever we can to support each other. In this same way, the collaboration grew beautifully. People are invested and sharing ownership of the project which has built passion and a sense of “we can do this!”. We have become renewed in our combined vision.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

Progress toward an innovation

With the new Safe Harbor 4 All core group members, we are closer than ever to achieving innovative change in the issue of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking in our state. There is invested interest by state legislators in moving the project forward. We have support from national organizations, local programs, coalitions, and survivors who are ready to testify on behalf of our vision to expand Safe Harbor to include all ages of those being exploited. These incredible partnerships all speak to the need to expand supportive services and understanding to survivors of all forms of sexual exploitation.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

Additional education for lawmakers and the larger community will be necessary to continue to cultivate more political will for change in this area. Minnesota is in a great position to make a lot of positive strides in the area of social justice as a whole, and we are optimistic that justice for survivors of all forms of sexual exploitation will be included in such strides.

What’s next?

The next steps for the project include putting forth a bill to expand the Safe Harbor for Youth statute to include all ages in service provision and legal protections.

We will utilize tools provided by a national anti-exploitation organization to create uniform education material for stakeholders and professionals to use in their local area to answer questions and facilitate understanding of what Safe Harbor for All means for their community. Yes

If you could do it all over again…

With recent candid conversations with legislators and lawyers with more understanding of the process, it has become clear that earlier in the grant period we were making more work for ourselves than necessary as we were essentially trying to reinvent the wheel. With the same vision, but a different modality by enhancing what is already there rather than building something new, there is a high likelihood to see our vision come to fruition.

Knowing this simple, but crucial, piece of information would have given us far more time to do the legislative and community education to get this accomplished earlier. We were too focused on the details when all we needed to do was provide direction and guidance to those that knew the process better.