In 2011 Voice of Hope (Lubbock Rape Crisis Center) and Forensic Nurse Staffing of West Texas noticed an increase in the number of children presenting in the emergency room with “red flags” of having been sex trafficked. In that same year, 53% of Voice of Hope’s sexual assault cases involved children under the age of 17 years. With the help of the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) and Forensic Nurse Staffing of West Texas, Voice of Hope spearheaded a local task force to assess Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST) in Lubbock and the surrounding rural communities. Because sex trafficking has become such a problem in the United States, this task force was comprised of representatives from several offices, agencies, and associations throughout the Lubbock community to help combat this ongoing issue.

The task force met monthly to discuss the issue of human trafficking, and eventually, a decision was made to conduct a community needs assessment to garner information from the local community about their knowledge of DMST and explore the various needs that this issue presents for our area. The Community Needs Assessment confirmed the documented statistics and reflected 73% of those who responded to the survey were seeing signs of sex trafficking.  The survey also revealed a gap in services for victims of DMST here in West Texas. There was no place to offer long-term residential services to the girls apart from the juvenile justice system.

Fighting to make a difference, community leaders Peggy Galanos, Kim Stark, Gloria Toti, Laura Pratt, and Terisa Clark founded the nonprofit organization called OneVoiceHome. This nonprofit organization is a key piece in a collaborative effort to combat DMST in Lubbock and the surrounding areas. We are committed to offering victims of domestic sex trafficking a safe home for restoration and the opportunity for a new beginning.

Faced with the knowledge there are girls and young women here in our community, who are victims of sex trafficking within our region and are not receiving long-term victim care, OneVoiceHome desires to take the lead in providing these services through a home of healing and restoration for them. OneVoiceHome is designed to be a faith-based, state-licensed, therapeutic home for sexually exploited girls, providing long term care and holistic case management and programming. Our hope is to develop a full campus for meeting the needs of these girls, allowing them to transition through different phases, bringing them from a place of initial rescue into a place of refuge, resiliency, recovery, and ultimately, complete restoration.

With over 79,000 child victims in Texas being sex trafficking at any given time, the need for this home is so great! Upon surveying several facilities around Texas able to house human trafficking victims, OneVoiceHome learned many of them operate with a near-constant wait list for minor victims of sex trafficking needing residential placement, so the need for this specific type of facility is great. Additionally, Lubbock, Amarillo, and the Midland/Odessa area are seeing an increase in the number of victims of domestic sex trafficking, and it is imperative we move quickly to address this gap in services evident in Lubbock, the surrounding rural communities, and the entire West Texas region.

We firmly believe that every survivor has a voice; it’s just that no one was listening. At OneVoice, our mission is to listen and meet them where they are on their journey to healing and restoration offering specialized tools and resources. We understand that this crucial work is best accomplished as a community. We believe that we cannot do it alone. That’s why we invite you to come alongside to join us in walking alongside brave young women. We recognize that while we may all have different roles, we are all called to make difference.

At OneVoice, we believe that success is defined by the transformative impact in the lives of the survivors we serve. Our programming aims to create opportunities for new beginnings, offering various avenues for growth and healing. We measure success through the accumulation of small wins in the everyday work undertaken by these brave young women, which ultimately leads to profound life change. Our goal is to reintroduce normalcy, joy, and newfound confidence by facilitating the creation of new positive memories. We define success as achieving small goals on a daily basis, such as self-care practices like staying hydrated, practicing mindfulness, adopting healthy coping skills, attending medical appointments, and reaching milestones in counseling. These achievements contribute to breaking the cycles of exploitation and foster a new way of living. By providing a supportive and empowering environment for the journey of healing and restoration, we aim to empower survivors to become overcomers who can positively impact the world around them.

Giving back and showing up for your community is of the utmost importance because every community holds immeasurable value and serves as the foundation for future generations. At OneVoice, we firmly believe that investing in your community is a responsibility we all share. When survivors of sex trafficking witness the collective support and resources provided by the community, it communicates a powerful message of love and value. Imagine if we all embraced the belief that the pain, trauma, and hardships endured by survivors were meant to be shared and carried collectively. By giving back to our community, we create a cycle of care and support that empowers individuals to heal, thrive, and ultimately transform their lives.

At OneVoice, we deeply value the impact of making a difference in just one life. Our motto, “For the One”, captures our unwavering commitment to each survivor we have the privilege to walk alongside. Our ultimate hope is for every survivor to recognize that they are deserving of support, resources, and tools necessary for their own healing journey which leads to graduating the Journey program. Our hope is to instill the confidence for every survivor to chart a new course and pursue their goals and dreams that breaks the cycle of going back into “the life”. We hope as survivors reflect on their journey with OneVoice, they will see that their accomplishments were driven by their own resilience, while being supported by a significant amount of their community that cheered them on.