Ferrell Brown of Street Grace Florida at September Lunch

Street Grace is a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children by leveraging the power of partnerships across government, business, and Faith communities. Ferrell’s organization combats demand and empowers youth through education, technology and community engagement. Their innovative initiatives includes awareness campaigns, survivor support, legislative advocacy, and cutting edge tools like artificial intelligence to disrupt trafficking networks.

During the presentation, Executive Director Ferrell Brown stated that Street Grace leads in the fight to eradicate the commercial sexual exploitation of children, taking a holistic, evidence-based approach that focuses on the four Ps:

• Prevention – preventing sexual exploitation by training parents youth and caring adults. 5th to 8th grader Youth Leadership Academy provides courses dedicated to help students thrive physically, emotionally, mentally, academically and socially. Leaders in communities have provided ~20,000 services to survivors of exploitation and their families survivors/families
• Protection – caring for at-risk children and survivors of sexual exploitation
• Policy – shaping legislation to reduce impunity for predators and better care for survivors
• Pursuit – leveraging the power of AI to deter sexual predators online

Sexual trafficking is basically a supply and demand issue. The supply are children / women mostly on the internet and the demand is many men on the internet purchasing children / women. It was noted that South Florida (Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties) leads sex trafficking in Florida. Just in the last couple of years the need has increased significantly:

• The number of individuals sex trafficked in the United States has increased 92% from 2015 to 2019
• 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys will be sexually exploited by the age of 18
• The number of children / women recruited on Facebook and Instagram increased by 120% from 2019 to 2020
• The commercial sex economy per year in major US cities ranges from $40 million to $290 million

To help eradicate sexual trafficking Street Grace is pioneering solutions to disrupt and prevent the sexual exploitation of children:

• Transaction Intercept – created in collaboration with BBDO, a team of 175 technology developer volunteers, and law enforcement agencies; Transaction Intercept works to find the buyers of minor sex, remove the cloak of anonymity, and disrupt potential transactions
• Justice Protection – Street Grace trains attorneys on how to use current laws to represent survivors who need their records expunged and connect them with survivors in need

If you’re interested in more information about Street Grace and their vision to see a world where all children are free from sexual exploitation, below is their contact information: