On Nov. 6, Motivating, Inspiring, Supporting and Serving Sexually Exploited Youth, or MISSSEY, held its first event at the Layover Lounge in order to raise funds to send a young group of survivors to Peru as part of the Advocacy delegation on Human Trafficking in June.

Nola Brantley, the executive director of MISSSEY, spoke with Oakland Local about the success of their first fundraising event.

“We raised $3,000!" she said. "The fundraiser was completely coordinated and planned by our volunteers.”
 
Brantley also sees MISSSEY’s first fundraiser successful because of the support shown by the Oakland community.

“The Layover Lounge gave us a huge discount and also donated money to MISSSEY. We appreciate all the effort they put in to help us create the space to fundraise and celebrate. It really was a great collaboration between the volunteers, the staff and members of the community.”

MISSSEY provides direct services to children who are being commercially, sexually exploited. There is a drop in center for clients under 18 located in the Alameda County Family Justice Center at 470 27th St. in Oakland, open Monday through Friday. MISSSEY is committed to meeting the basic and emergency needs of any child that comes to the center. The organization endeavors to do more than provide counseling to children who are commercially sexually exploited by creating a family environment with field trips, arts and crafts workshops and holiday celebrations.

There also are case managers that act as surrogate parents to the children. If there is a parent or foster parent involved with the client, then the case manager will co-parent. A case manager is active in everything from school enrollment, to locating mental health services, to taking the child to the doctor.

For clients 18-21, they have resource specialists to focus on self-sustainability - these include childcare, transportation, mental healthcare, medical healthcare, skill building and other areas that any women would need to be sustainable.
 
When asked what is most effective in helping children who have been commercially sexually exploited recover, Brantley talks about the survivor led/peer led services.

"With certain forms of abuse, like domestic violence and rape, the individual, in order to recover, needs to interact with someone who has been through what they have been through and made it to the other side," she said. "We have a very strong survivor led/peer led model. It’s very successful at MISSSEY and with other organizations around the country who are helping commercially sexually exploited children.”

Brantley also stresses the long-term commitment that MISSSEY is making to these children.

“When a client is referred to us, we know we are going to be working with that child until they are 18 and even longer," she said. "Our average time for working with a client is three years, and we’ve only been around for three and a half years!”

MISSSEY’s model is intentionally non-judgmental, which Brantley sees as integral to helping children recover from being exploited due to the stigma around prostitution. According to Bentley, the media could be a very effective ally if it would stop misidentifying commercially sexually exploited children as prostitutes.

“They don’t say there are children being sexually exploited on the street. They say there are teen prostitutes. That is ridiculous," Brantley said. "A child under the age of 18 can’t legally consent to sex in this state, so therefore they can never be a prostitute. The media should be reporting on the chronic rape and sexual exploitation of children, not teen-age prostitution.”

What MISSEY needs most from our community is volunteers to get the word out about MISSSEY by doing presentations to the community and collecting donations. Volunteers can do the outreach that MISSSEY staff is not always available for since they are providing direct services.

Before volunteers work with clients directly, MISSSEY offers an extensive training program, including a six-month project commitment. However, Brantley said she believes that educating the community about the realities of commercially sexually exploited children is crucial in order to really help.

“We need to let people know that the average age of entry into prostitution in our country is 12 years old,” she said.

To learn more about MISSSEY, to donate or volunteer, visit its website.

For more on this topic, visit http://oaklandlocal.com/tags/traffickingseries.