what we’re doing
Prax(us) launched its community organizing program in July 2009. This expanded community outreach effort encompasses two main components: Know Your Rights organizing so that youth in trafficking situations can exercise their rights, and the use of popular education to raise consciousness and connect personal experiences to larger societal problems.
Both the Know Your Rights and popular education models are especially relevant to work with trafficking survivors. Trafficking systems are built on subservience to a “pimp” or trafficker to maintain the relationship. Community engagement through Know Your Rights and popular education work empowers participants to effect change on the problems that affect them. Both models emphasize changing dynamics for survivors so they can seek out relationships that are equal power based, as well as examine how the dynamics of power around sexual orientation, race, gender identity, class, sex, age, and immigration status impact human trafficking. This information is translated externally into organizing campaigns decided upon by participants. To find out more, contact Stephanie Bell, Community Organizer, at stephanie@praxus.org.
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
American Friends Service Committee, Colorado office
Advisory Committee on Homeless Youth to the Mayor
Children’s Hospital Immunodeficiency Program
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Colorado Anti-Violence Program
Colorado Collaborative
Coloradans for Immigrant Rights
Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition
Colorado Network to End Human Trafficking
Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights
Denver Street Outreach Collaboration
Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado
Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network
Youth HIV Advocacy Coalition