Shared Hope International Organizational Background, Mission, and Programs

Shared Hope International (SHI) strives to prevent the conditions that foster sex trafficking, restore, and empower survivors, and bring justice to vulnerable adults, youth, girls, and boys. For over twenty years SHI has been the leading organization in the United States that is not only addressing these key initiatives, but also providing policy research, resources, and legislative advocacy for hundreds of other United States organizations working to eradicate sex slavery in our nation and world.

The sex trafficking industry is fueled by buyers who pay traffickers to supply victims to meet their demand. Men, women and children from a wide variety of backgrounds are victimized through sex trafficking. Children’s emotional and economic dependence on others and undeveloped ability to analyze decisions and understand consequences combined with their high “market value” among buyers make them especially vulnerable to traffickers.
SHI created three pillars by which the mission is fulfilled: prevent, restore and bring justice. Prevention and justice are implemented through multi-modal trainings (on-demand self-directed courses, live recorded webinars, and printed courses), the annual national Juvenile Sex Trafficking (JuST) Conference, and by initializing awareness campaigns across the country. SHI trains over 1,000 professionals each year including teachers, medical first responders, law enforcement, and members of the legal system. SHI also trains the community on the warning signs of sex trafficking. Training advances the systems of care, empowers victims of trafficking, and allows for the advancement of methods to disrupt trafficking. SHI trains over 1,000 professionals each year including teachers, medical first responders, law enforcement, and members of the legal system. SHI also trains the community on the warning signs of sex trafficking. Training advances the systems of care, empowers victims of trafficking, and allows for the advancement of methods to disrupt trafficking. SHI’s advanced Report Cards on Child & Youth Sex Trafficking in 2021 builds upon the framework of laws evaluated under the original Protected Innocence Challenge launched in 2011, and preserves the most fundamental components of the original framework while including new policy priorities that reflect feedback and research from the field. These Report Cards focus largely on victim protection laws, including specialized service responses and access to justice issues.