Photo by Jay Young Crown Street Roasting Company in Jamestown displayed visuals on its storefront in order to help raise awareness during January, which is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

This January organizations and individuals in Western New York and beyond gathered behind a common cause as part of National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

The Child Advocacy Program has led the charge forward in Jamestown, increasing its work around the county to offer training and expand the public discussion about abuse and trafficking.

“It is just an opportunity to bring awareness to this issue,” said Kayleah Feser, coordinator of the CAP Safe Harbour Program. “It is a great opportunity, specifically for us here in a rural community like ours, because typically Chautauqua County residents probably don’t think of trafficking as something that happens here in our community. This just gives us more of a special time to highlight that this issue is actually occurring.”

Begun in 2016 and acquired by CAP in 2019, the Safe Harbour Program was created by New York state and the county to address the rise of human trafficking and exploitation of children.

CAP currently operates with a staff of 14, and spent much of January expanding its connection to local organizations to help raise awareness.

“Throughout the past several years the Safe Harbor Program, the Child Advocacy Program and other partners that we work with have utilized this month to bring extra awareness to this issue,” Feser said. “One of the things that we have done in the past and continued to do this year is we rented space at Crown Street Roasting in Jamestown where we decorated their front window to raise awareness about trafficking.”

Visitors to Crown Street may have noticed a front window display during January, with silhouettes of children representing the number who may be at a high risk for exploitation in the area.

One of the most encouraging signs in recent months for CAP has been the retention of those involved with the program, many of whom are interested in continuing to fight against trafficking and abuse.

“One of the cool things that we have done over the past couple of months that has kind of come to a peak right now is, we’ve had a lot of community members that have attended our various training express interest in becoming more involved in the issue,” Feser said. “We are working with our Community Action Team to bring together these interested volunteers, just lay community members who are not involved in service provision to educate them beyond just the normal–what is this issue?”

Following the steps of so many other organizations in response to COVID-19, much of the CAP outreach in recent months has gone digital.

With the pandemic giving rise to increased rates of substance abuse and domestic violence, there is also concern that human trafficking may have increased and taken different forms over the past year.

“All of that is so tied in with trafficking. The dynamics of those issues go hand-in-hand,” Feser said, speaking of substance abuse, domestic violence and economic dislocation.

“We are all cut off from our supports right now. We are all isolated to some degree and there are a lot of folks economically suffering, and there are a lot of other factors. One of the things that is kind of on the forefront of our minds right now, especially at CAP, is we are seeing a lot more online exploitation happening.”

With children spending more and more time online, there is an increased potential for coercion through digital media.

“There are so many more students at home unsupervised, with so much access online,” Feser said. “Definitely we have seen significantly more numbers of referrals with regards to that issue of youth that are being targeted by exploiters online.”

But here the edge of technology cuts in two directions. Digital platforms also have the ability to improve awareness of these issues and make training and outreach more effective.

“On the flip side of this we have really been able to utilize technology to our advantage,” Feser said. “We’ve had so many referrals from teachers, therapists outside of our program, who are meeting with youths virtually and able to identify a lot of red flags and warning signs for not just trafficking but general abuse and non-healthy behaviors.”