The Future of REST Part 1: A Change to our Mission Statement

The work of REST began on the streets of Seattle, building relationships with people involved in the sex trade, the majority of whom were being trafficked. In theory, we had a simple objective: build trust, ask what they need, and make sure they get it. And if we discovered that what they needed didn’t exist or didn’t work, we committed to building it. In practice, we learned that very few services were designed to meet the needs of survivors of trafficking and failed to accommodate for the, often, years of complex trauma they’ve endured. 

We ended up building. A lot. 

Thirteen years later, we’ve built one of the largest continuum of services designed by and dedicated for victims and survivors of sex trafficking in the United States. Over 600 individuals engage with REST each year, and more than 400 of them enroll in one or more of our services like emergency shelter, community-based advocacy, behavioral health, economic empowerment, transitional housing, or permanent housing. Our impact measurement model enables us to implement continuous improvement within our services and ensure survivors have the greatest opportunity to recover from trafficking and achieve their goals. 

We successfully advanced our founding mission to provide pathways to freedom, safety, and hope for victims of sex trafficking and people involved in the sex trade. 

Given our history of successful growth, it might surprise you then to know that we embarked on a strategic planning initiative to ask ourselves if we were doing the right things. We wanted to consider our way forward in light of a community-first approach to nonprofit leadership, in which we believe that a nonprofit exists to eradicate systems of harm, rather than merely treat symptoms of harmful systems. This is not a new approach for us, but it was helpful to step back and ask if we were still on the right path and operating with an obvious long-term objective for the organization. This led us to unanimously simplify and embolden our mission statement, which now reads: 

REST exists to expand pathways to freedom, safety, and hope in order to end sex trafficking. 

Did you feel a little spark ignite in your spirit? We feel it too!

There are three important changes we want to highlight: 

1. We changed the word “provide” to “expand” in order to emphasize a multiplying effect as we work with partners and other organizations around the country to expand pathways to freedom, safety, and hope. 

2. We removed specific language about the “who” we provide pathways for in order to create space for strategic activities that we believe will contribute to the end of sex trafficking but are not specifically direct service efforts. 

3. We added a clear, bold, and long-term aim for REST: to end sex trafficking. This will act as a litmus test for all of our work as we move forward and multiply our impact. We must be certain that our services, our partnerships, and our projects contribute to the end of sex trafficking. 

The important things will stay the same.

We will continue providing direct services with survivors as our core work, and our Statement of Faith and organizational values will carry us forward. Our underlying belief that everyone is worthy of love and deserves to live a life without exploitation continues to be the heartbeat of REST and will guide us in how we expand pathways to freedom, safety, and hope in order to end sex trafficking.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped inform the future of REST!

Thank you to Lindsey T.H. Jackson, Founder and CEO of DEI Consulting Firm, LTHJ Global, Inc, who led REST through a 9-month initiative to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the organization. It was Lindsey’s guidance about community-first nonprofits that reminded us of our roots and launched us into a strategic planning initiative.

Thank you to the dozens of survivors, employees, partners, donors, and community members who weighed in via interviews, focus groups, and surveys to share their recommendations for the future of REST.

Thank you to Janet Jensen with The Jensen Project, for providing REST Leadership with a grant to participate in a STRATOP process to clarify our purpose and build out our strategic plan.

Thank you to all of those who lifted REST up in prayer as we considered our path forward.

Coming up next: The Future of REST Part 2: Expanding Pathways. The next blog in our series will highlight our newly adopted five-year strategic plan and how we hope to multiply our impact. 

What makes us look the other way?

by Shama Shams, Director of Philanthropy & Marketing and a Survivor

A couple of weeks ago a video surfaced from a surveillance camera on Aurora Avenue.   It appeared that a young woman was being physically abused by a man.  This woman was in the middle of the street when he approached her and knocked her down to the pavement as he kicked and punched her repeatedly.

Car after car approached the intersection where this abuse was taking place and turned away.  No one got out of the car to offer help during this three-minute video footage.   

The term “bystander intervention” describes a situation where someone who isn’t directly involved steps in to change the outcome. Stepping in may give the person of concern a chance to get to a safe place or leave the situation.  

As I watched the video, I found myself wondering why no one stopped to lend a hand.  As a survivor of physical and sexual abuse, that question came to my mind countless times a question not just directed to strangers, but to my own family members as well. So many people knew and even witnessed my abuse, but allowed it to continue. What makes us look the other way?

In 1964, Kitty Genovese was arriving home from work in the middle of the night when she was brutally stabbed to death while several of her neighbors looked on.  This incident led to the coining of the term “bystander effect” – a phenomenon within social psychology that describes how people are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present.  

After Genovese’s murder, there was a widespread public condemnation of the witnesses who did not come to Kitty Genovese’s aid. The incident also gave rise to an entire area of psychological research to determine why some bystanders help and why others do not.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, a bystander is present in 70 percent of assaults and 52 percent of robberies. The percentage of people who help a victim varies widely by the type of crime, the environment, and other key variables.

A well-known study found that when bystanders were alone, 75 percent helped when they thought a person was in trouble. However, when a group of six people was together, only 31 percent helped.

Being part of a group often diminishes one’s sense of personal responsibility. Instead, there’s a feeling of anonymity. In this state, people are more likely to do things they would never do individually. 

Common reasons for not coming to the aid of a victim include:

• fear that the personal risk of harm is too great

• feeling that one doesn’t have the strength or other traits needed in order to be able to help

• assuming that others are better qualified to help

• watching the reactions of other witnesses and assuming the situation is not as serious as you initially thought because they don’t seem alarmed

• or fear becoming the target of aggression or bullying

The bystander effect has become one of the most well-recognized concepts in modern psychology. And it extends far beyond how people behave in an emergency. In just about any group situation requiring one person to step forward to accomplish something necessary, there is often a delay while members of the group decide who will be the volunteer who will act. 

In the volunteer’s dilemma, a mutually beneficial outcome will result from one person doing a relatively unpleasant task while the others simply benefit without doing anything. This means that each member of the group needs to decide on whether to be the one to step forward or not.

Much like the bystander effect, the time needed to decide who will volunteer rises depending on how many volunteers there are in the group. If there are only two volunteers, then it quickly devolves into a game of "you do it, no you do it" (a familiar enough scenario in real life).

The next time you find yourself in a situation agonizing over who will do something, think about the bystander effect and the volunteer's dilemma. Sometimes, all it takes is one person willing to act.