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Best Ways to Support Safe Homes | Starting and Supporting a Safe Home - Season 5, Episode 4
79 Plays1 month ago
The U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking and Kids Not For Sale presents a special new, 4-part episode titled “Starting and Supporting a Safe Home.” In this season, we sit down with Brandy Cristafulli, the Founder and President of LifeRecaptured, a safe home out of Florida that provides shelter, restoration, and healing for trafficked women throughout the United States.
In this season, Brandy shares with us how she began her safe home, how she runs her safe home, and what she has learned along the way. This is extremely insightful for anyone wanting to end human trafficking in America. We can all be educated on where to assist organizations that help victims of human trafficking, but this dives in even deeper. Whether you are wanting to begin a safe home or simply just support, Brandy provides the proper directions for how to do just that. It goes beyond loving and caring - we must be ready to provide a service that may seem unorthodox to some of us, but helps victims restore their lives.
In this episode, we discuss how hard it is for safe homes to raise enough support (both finances and resources) and how we, as a community, can do a better job to support our local safe homes. We also talk about ways NOT to support a safe home. We may think it’s helpful or a good ideal, but what matters is fulfilling a need that will help these survivors of human trafficking heal and thrive toward restoration.
If you want to become more educated and engaged in the fight to end human trafficking, subscribe to become an Abolitionist at usiaht.org/abolitionist
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Transcript
Misconceptions About Support for Safe Homes
00:00:00
Speaker
So Brandi, in our last segment, what we talked about was what your safe home should be accomplishing. And so now, after we've learned everything that you do here and and and what we've encouraged other safe homes to possibly just do as well, now we want to talk about support. um Naturally, when someone hears support, they think, all right, here comes the ask for finances, right? Well,
00:00:25
Speaker
Your dog gone right we are. It takes a lot of money to do this. But there's ah you've shared throughout these segments, the type of support you get is more than just finances. um So we'll talk about the finances in a moment, but let's first talk about your network. and Your network, it's it seems to me, like even if you had a lot of money,
00:00:51
Speaker
but you didn't have the network, you wouldn't be able to afford.
Building a Network for Safe Homes
00:00:54
Speaker
even with you know So um you mentioned your budget $600,000, that's because of the network. I bet you if you didn't have the network, it would be in a larger budget. right So um I know that there are so many, and I'm sure you don't want to be pressured to even name them all right now. But like what who are some of the main, if you were to suggest to ah someone starting a safe home or looking to start a safe home, or possibly someone that you is in your network that wants to help us save home. um Who are some of the some of the key people or key professions that truly help you do what you do here?
00:01:32
Speaker
Well, the way it worked for me was that I'm willing to go anywhere to talk about this. I don't care if it's in a house of three, or if it's in a church of a thousand, or if it's in a um clerk of the court's office. Wherever I go, I go with a heart. It's hard for me to close, you know, talk about money. That's hard for me.
00:01:52
Speaker
But um I've realized that if I don't share that part of it, that we wouldn't exist. So I couldn't say like, start with this person. I would just say, if you're going to start a safe home, you need to say to someone, could you get a group of people together at your home so that I can come in and tell you what we're doing?
00:02:13
Speaker
it's not It's really not like the people that are high end people that have a lot of money to give that keep us going. It's not. It's the middle class person. It's the little widow who usually gives us like $50 a month is a lot for her. That's a lot. We had one lady that's given us $10 faithfully every month.
00:02:34
Speaker
To me, and I mean this sincerely, to me, that makes me so happy because what she gives, she gives from her heart. She's sincere about helping these girls. So I would say to anyone who's starting this, it's not one specific place. It's go to the churches,
00:02:53
Speaker
Introduce yourself to the pastors, have your vision and your mission, and be able to share your heart. Don't script. If it's from your heart, they will listen to you. If it's a script, nobody wants to hear it because there's so many nonprofits. But what we're doing is we're saving lives that nobody else is really going in and saving. This is not really talked about human trafficking the way it should be. You just hear about it on the movies or on the news.
00:03:20
Speaker
So go to these different places, whatever you feel your contacts are.
Unexpected Sources of Support
00:03:25
Speaker
You know where I first went? I went to a Veterans Post. And I was scared to death. It was the first time I had taught and it's all older people that are such nice people, but they they look powerful to me because I'm in a, what do you call that? Um, post it's a veterans post and I'm telling what's happening, but it's before men and I'm trying to be very careful what I say. And all of a sudden he starts banging on the desk with a gavel. And I thought, I said something wrong. And I said, did I say something wrong?
00:03:55
Speaker
He said, no, guys, go get your guns. Give me the list of men that are doing this. And we're going out to take care of them right now. And I said, no, we can't do that. So I'm just saying to you that those people support me. I'm telling you that people you never thought would support you. Once they hear your heart, they want to help both of them. We're living in a tough time right now. Might be a little harder.
00:04:23
Speaker
But those are the people that I reached out to at the beginning. Who is supporting you right now? that's They're supporting you practically. um And I'm not talking about direct
Role of Medical and Service Support
00:04:33
Speaker
volunteers. We'll talk about those in a minute. I'm talking about, like, for example, you mentioned, I'm talking about the people who support you without supporting you financial financially, but sort of giving you a service. So for example, that you mentioned you have a hospital, a pilot, so and so forth. um Who are, would you say, is like a good core team to begin with?
00:04:53
Speaker
but as far as that network goes. Well, I think it's really important to try to find medical help because when these girls come in, I found a dentist because a lot of the girls lose their teeth because of drugs. I found a dentist that would do the work for no charge. That's not going to be easy.
00:05:09
Speaker
You're going to have to go around and talk to them and see if they have a heart. And I found one that did. And then I found a surgeon that would take off their ah their brandings. And then that was that's a lot of money. We didn't have it. He does it for no charge. and Then I found a hospital that would let me go in the back door. I went and talked to their board. That's what I did. And one of the board members started some monies and an account for me that if I needed something beyond what they would offer me, I could use that money. And I just go in, it's not always comfortable because you've got these people just staring at you and you're here to ask for their help. And you may not think you're gonna get it, but when you get through talking and sometimes you're about to go out the door, they wanna talk to you and they're gonna help you. So hospitals and dentists, then I need someone for glasses. Most of their eyes were bad.
00:06:03
Speaker
So we went to different eye doctors and found eye doctors that would give us that. And listen to this, this is so wonderful. We needed over the counter meds. We went to a pharmacist. Now they'll give us three times a year all the hygiene products we need.
00:06:19
Speaker
They give to us like our ibuprofen in Advil and private hygiene products for the women. They just load us up. And this is a pharmacist. And so, you know, when you start to see what the girls need is what triggers you to know where you need to go and get the support. And so I would say not just the things they need, but I went to people to see where can we have fun.
00:06:47
Speaker
you want You want to do some things for the girls is fun, but you got to make sure you can trust the person. If you want to take them out on a charter boat, if you want to take them to the beach and maybe there's a restaurant by that would give you food that for them. So there is opportunities out there. And then, of course, the churches, um i I don't have a lot of them, but the ones that support me, they're wonderful to me.
Churches as Pillars of Support
00:07:15
Speaker
They help me decorate. They help me get this couch. They help me with different things that I need. And there's certain ones of these churches, ah man I mean, I could not live without them. They are just wonderful. I want to use this moment to say that the U.S. Institute has a strategy for churches to truly get involved with safe homes. And it kind of has to do with this topic.
00:07:38
Speaker
um Marketing a safe home is much different than marketing any kind of other nonprofit ministry. You're trying to be secretive. um The more exposure you have, the harder it is for you to do what you do. right um Which is kind of like a catch 22 in a way, right? Which is why if there is a church that supports a safe home, I actually put it on them more.
00:08:10
Speaker
to network to other churches to share the safe home they support. wow If I think about a church that supports you, I would want them to reach out to 10 churches nearby and say, do you support a safe home? If they do, awesome. Thank you. Move on to the next one. Do you support a safe home? No, I don't know of any. Got it. Right? ah It's harder for a church to find a safe home to support.
00:08:37
Speaker
it's than than it is for a church that's already supporting Safe Home to contact them and say, hey, are you supporting the Safe Home? We're talking to pastors, we're talking to church leaders who simply, as part of their job, can share, hey, this is part of us ministering to our city, our sphere of influence. So I want to implore any church, any any congregates, there's listeners right now, use your network. Use your network of Christians. Use your network of those who said, Jesus said, go help the poor, go help the need, go help those who are suffering. This is your moment. So you go support a safe home is literally doing that direct work. That's gonna be way
00:09:22
Speaker
better than you grabbing a gun and doing something about it. Yes, yes. I know we've seen and in in the the movies that help motivate us on the awareness and we're thankful for that. But if you can't take your phone to make did you call just a another church to say, hey, are you doing this? Can you consider doing this with us to at least make that call to action? Then What good are you going to do in rescuing even one child? So I just want to implore that that we need to gather around the support. And that's just a practical way of doing that. And that's ah something from the U.S. Institute is we've talked like, here's a good strategy on how the church can help. And by the way, let's say you're not a church. It could be a business, could be a friend, could be a family. Either way, a safe home is supposed to be, it's not for like this safe home for all of Florida.
00:10:17
Speaker
You are a safe home in Brevard County. I would argue that you need multiple safe homes in Brevard County. Let's start off with one safe home in county just for now, but we're not even close to that for how many safe homes we have. So when it comes to supporting, we start there of growing that network around you to make it easier for you to say, all right, here's the help I need and for the others to get involved with that. They shouldn't be putting that on you to go find the help. um You're here to help.
00:10:46
Speaker
um victims become survivors. Everyone else can be helping around the other things. And so what I um want to encourage everyone to do is do that for any safe home. um If you don't know of one, I promise you, you can find somebody. And if you can't at all start here. Here's one life recaptured. Everyone can support something. And so now going into and that network,
00:11:16
Speaker
I'm sure that if all of a sudden you got flooded with thousands of people are like, I wanna help you.
Volunteer Commitment and Training
00:11:22
Speaker
They probably wanna help come and volunteer here, right? um I'm ready for you to share the hard truth when it comes to volunteering at Safe Homes. It's needed, but there are very there are a lot of limitations to it.
00:11:37
Speaker
Can I also add to, Jeremy, what you just said, which really moved me. Thank you. You don't know how much I've prayed for what you just said. We are vetted by the school board, by the courts, by the clerk of the courts. When you're vetted by them, they go all the way back to when you and your mother is womb. So when you work with the the police department, they vet you. So if you're thinking of giving to us and someone may say, oh, how can you trust them?
00:12:04
Speaker
You can trust us because we've been vetted. And when we have been vetted and cleared and they see that we're doing something, then that should give you a movement to go forward. um So you said about volunteers. Wow, do we need volunteers? Can I first say, I covet praying people that will pray for us.
00:12:26
Speaker
I believe Jeremy and people have said this over and over. We did so much in the first two years, it couldn't have happened without God. People tell us all the time, how did you grow this big in such a short time and do everything you're doing? um I'm telling you right now it was God. And yes, people helped us, but those people were led by by God. For me, advocates need to understand that coming in this, they're going to be like me, most of them. You're not going to really understand what trafficking is. You just have a heart for it.
00:12:56
Speaker
But if you have that heart for it, I can train you. But you must go through the training to see which area you fit in. We have different entities that you can help in, but you not don't need to be offended if you do ah my CI agents that would interview you and feel that you wouldn't fit in the safe house. It's just because we don't want you to be hurt or the survivor to be hurt because you don't know how to handle a situation. And sometimes people are just so kind, they can't do this.
00:13:26
Speaker
But there's so many different areas that we need advocates, we need transportation people, we need social media, we need um people for the lawn service, we need people in the medical profession, we need more school teachers. We need so many things because not always do you have volunteers to stay with you.
00:13:49
Speaker
They may have to go on vacation. You planned them on the schedule and all of a sudden they're gone. We need backup people because these women can't just come and sit. They want to know what's our schedule and are we going to stick to it? um Just like you said earlier, um someone said they didn't feel that they were getting anything that was valuable to them. They want to know what they're doing while they're here is meaning something to their life.
00:14:15
Speaker
So when you want to come and volunteer with me, I am so happy about that, but you need to come in understanding that wherever you fit in, you have to be trained, signed an NDA form, and you have to be fingerprinted, and you have to be willing to really work at what you're doing. And sometimes you might get denied something you want to be doing, yeah such as working directly with the survivors. survivors that's I mean, that's...
00:14:45
Speaker
That's a lot of vetting that goes on and not everyone is ready to do it. Right, right. Sometimes they'll start and then they realize they can't do it because of the heaviness of the trauma that they're being subjected to every day. It affects their life and it will affect your life.
00:15:01
Speaker
It affects mine and so you gotta just be willing to say this is for me or or it's not for me. Now we have two directors instead of one because when you have one that is just loving them but doesn't know how to carry out the boundaries part, now we've learned from that.
00:15:19
Speaker
We have two directors. They balance each other out. One is accountable to the other. So if one is much more loving and administrative, this one over here on this side can be tough love, but still good, helping them to balance out. A lot involved in in bringing in your all of your volunteers. And we do get in-kind service for that.
00:15:41
Speaker
We get, you know, we can write down everything for community help. If we can show them that we're getting some in-kind service like the pilot and the hospitals, then a lot of times in our
Funding and Societal Contributions
00:15:53
Speaker
own community, even though it's not a federal grant, they'll give something to help us. We have seen more safe homes close down over the last five years than like ever before.
00:16:05
Speaker
Why do you think that is? Two things from what I've seen. People accusing them of bad things and not always is it true. You will get people that come in your safe home they get mad at you. We just had that happen about a week ago and they'll go on the internet and they'll write the most terrible things about your safe home and they want to They want to crash and burn everything you're doing because they weren't willing to walk with the program. And I i didn't know how to handle that and until I got my own psychologist telling me, there's nothing I can do. I did my best with them. I'm not going to fight with them. So it can be bad or it could be a real problem with the safe house where they're not trained properly.
00:16:49
Speaker
They just add they went got their license to be open. There's no regulations. There's no procedures. There's no essential resources. So all of a sudden they're faced with this group of girls and they don't know what to do. Their heart was right. They wanted to make this work, but they're not trained so they don't know how and they don't have enough help.
00:17:09
Speaker
And the other thing of funding, we have we have hung by a thread trying to make this work. And I mean out every week until late at night calling people saying, can you help us? We we have volunteers and we have paid staff.
00:17:25
Speaker
You have to have some paid staff. They get peanuts for what they get. They're not getting anybody can look at our books. We're open to that. You can come and look at it and see what we do and how we do it. But if if society doesn't help us, there is no way, Jeremy, that safe houses are going to exist.
00:17:47
Speaker
They're not going to. You've got to have a heart society and churches step up and people that wanna do something to help someone step up and help. I don't care if it's volunteering or $5 a week or $5,000 a week. It's good when people say, I love what you're doing. I have wanted to do this for so long. I just wanna thank you so much. Well, you may thank me this week and I may not be here next week.
00:18:15
Speaker
because I can't make this work without funds. So I need them. You can go on our website and partner with us or you could send a check or you could come in and see what we're doing and then partner with us. We want to have integrity. We want to have transparency and we want people to know that we're trying to do our best to do what it takes to give these girls and boys another chance.
00:18:42
Speaker
What do you want to see happen with support of other safe homes around, not just Brevard County, Florida, United States, so on and so forth?
Public Understanding and Emotional Realities
00:18:52
Speaker
What is your dream? My dream is for people to understand. We talk about homelessness. We talk about um spouses with children that are just one spouse. We talk about ah cancer victims. Those are all so needed to raise those funds, but it seems like human trafficking It's just thrown over in the corner and everybody talks about the emotion of it. But the sincerity of trying to go out and rescue these people, people don't even understand. They really do not understand. I want to see safe houses get to the place that they can explain more to the public what's going on. I want to see them where that they can be transparent enough
00:19:36
Speaker
to say, look, we need some help. We can't run this by ourself. And to see safe homes. Study. and show that they're able to run a safe house the way that it should be, and then to get the funding. I want more people to understand the more safe houses we close down, the more lost souls we have out there that feels nobody hears them. Nobody cares. I hear that from them. I see their faces. Sometimes I can't sleep because it's not just my duty. It's yours. It's everybody's.
00:20:13
Speaker
And they need a fair chance. The one girl that was blind or trafficker beat her so hard that her retinas are detached. She'll never see again. Is that fair?
00:20:25
Speaker
We know what freedom is every day. They don't even know what it is. But we need safe homes around the United States, not just to be a safe home that you open up and then you find out people are living in it, but to have a safe home where we can go forward together and collaborate and work together and help each other. And we can do it. We can be strong, right?
00:20:50
Speaker
more hands that are involved, the easier it is to do this if we if we do it right. So that's what I want to see. i'm I'm open to helping people like the mentors that helped me. I'm not secretive. I don't want to just be look at my safe house, let's all do it. Maybe mine's not perfect. Maybe yours is great and I can learn something from you that is so remarkable for your success. I want it. Will you share it with me? Maybe something you see, you can come down and stay in my safe house and we can collaborate together and go, what do we need to do to make this more successful for all of these girls and boys across the United States of America? And we can do it.
00:21:36
Speaker
We can do it. If people like you keep getting out there, what the real issues are, start with a foundation, a foundation of knowing what you're doing. And then the next level, getting the people that are loyal, the people that want to really do it, and then the people that will fund what you're doing. If you have those three levels, for me, it's Christ also. But if you have those three foundations, you will be successful.
00:22:07
Speaker
Thank you, Brandy. Thank you for your time. Thank you for what you're doing. And thank you for thank you for living a Christ-centered life that puts His creation above yours. Thank you.
00:22:26
Speaker
Thank you for following us in this series. If we'd like to learn more about Brandy and their ministry, Life Recaptured, you can visit their website at liferecaptured.org. At the U
Call to Action: Support and Involvement
00:22:36
Speaker
.S. Institute, we are always looking for more ways to support safe homes throughout the country. But please, don't just wait on our efforts. As we mentioned in our strategy, begin by simply calling your own network.
00:22:48
Speaker
call a church near you that supports their safe home. If they don't support a safe home, call them back once you find one. Find a way to gather multiple businesses, churches, and individuals around a safe home. There are not nearly enough safe homes, and the ones that exist are greatly needing help.
00:23:07
Speaker
They truly only exist through people like Brandy who simply forfeit their salary or any other expenses that they can. It would be wonderful to have a strong safe home in every single county throughout the United States, beginning what we think is with Texas, California, and Florida, because those are the top three states that report the most human trafficking each year.
00:23:29
Speaker
If you are interested in beginning a safe home, please begin the research and proper education. A great resource to begin with is Life Recaptured, or you could always contact their mentor, Salem Freedom. Both of these sources provide consultation to direct service providers.
00:23:47
Speaker
We also want to encourage talking with your local law enforcement. That's the same thing that Brandy did. It is our goal at the U.S. Institute to introduce ideas and strategies to end human trafficking. This is your first step, learning. The next step is engaging with what you have learned, which is often the next step of education.
00:24:06
Speaker
We can all do something, so our call to action from this series is to do at least one of these three things. Number one is to start the process of launching a safe home. This is a big one, but if you can relate to Brandy and her story, then please follow the calling and move forward with the education, the wisdom, and the discernment. Number two is to support a safe home.
00:24:30
Speaker
Use the strategy we discussed by finding a safe home in your area and ask others to support them. If you cannot find one, life recaptured is needing your support right now, so consider starting there. Also, remember that support is not always financial, but it usually does relieve a financial burden.
00:24:50
Speaker
Number three is to pray for safe homes. Pray for connections to be made. Pray for more volunteers. Pray for more resources. Pray for more funding. Pray that more lives are impacted. Pray for those in safe homes. As Christ has commanded us to bring our prayers to him, let us bring this daily as Jesus is our true hope. Let's lean on God and use the gifts he's bestowed upon us to further his kingdom. Thank you guys.