WEAVE offers internships to high school students willing to commit to an ongoing project.  Here is the story of one student’s experience at WEAVE.

I am a student as The Met High School in Sacramento. This year, I am interning at WEAVE. As a part of my internship, our school requires that we to do a project that will benefit the site we intern at. I decided to have two parts to my project, a fundraiser and an awareness event.

The fundraiser was to raise money for backpacks for The Anti-Trafficking Program at WEAVE. The backpacks are given to survivors of commercial sexual exploitation who are in need of  basic belongings such as clothes, hand towels and washrags, hygiene and personal care items, bus passes, gift cards in small amounts to grocery stores, Target or Wal-Mart.  I have  completed the fundraiser and had a successful fun bake sale to raise the money for the backpacks.

The bake sale came together with the help of a group of students in my advisory who volunteered to bake and help prep for the bake sale. It was a blast to bake with them and they were all happy to contribute to a good cause.

We set up a table in the cafeteria at lunch and set out the cupcakes, cookies and lemon bread. The students began to notice the table as they gathered for lunch in the cafeteria and in a short time the table was over whelming with kids, all wanting something much tastier to eat then the lunch that day at the school.

 All together I raised $202 dollars through purchases and donations! It was a great experience for me and it made me realize that even a teenager like myself, can really make a difference and help.

The second part of my project is to give a presentation to my advisory at my high school to educate them on Human Trafficking. I am doing the presentation this month. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Thanks for reading!

Emily

A Message from Emily’s WEAVE Mentor:

Emily is a great example of how one person can change many lives. Many survivors of human trafficking lose all of their belongings when they escape. They face the terrible choice of returning to their trafficker or going without. The care packages Emily puts together will meet the basic needs of young sex trafficking survivors here in Sacramento. This provides an  invaluable sense of security that empowers youth to move into the healing process.

If you would like to bring together your community, school, church, or work place to assemble care packages for young people, WEAVE would like to support you in making a difference.  Just let us know how we can help! Ideally, each care package would include all of the items listed below:

• Sweats/lounge-wear (small sizes)
• Underclothing (socks, bra’s, underwear)
• Backpacks
• Journals/pens
• Stationary and stamps
• Hand towels and washrags
• Hygiene and personal care items (tampons, deodorant, hair brushes, etc)
• Bus passes
• Gift cards in small denominations (Grocery stores, Target, WalMart)

Items can be dropped off at our counseling center at 1900 K Street, Attention Mandy Taylor.  If you have any questions about WEAVE’s Anti-Trafficking Program or how you can make a difference in the loves of survivors, please contact me.

Thank you,

Mandy Taylor, MSW

(916) 319-4910

mandyt@weaveinc.org