Groups supporting victims of human trafficking receive more government funding​on February 21, 2025 at 10:38 pm

Whenever Alisha McManus looks back, she is blown away by the resolve that has allowed her to play a public role against human trafficking — a world that had once swallowed up her life.

The journey from exploitation to empowerment was long and onerous, one that she said wouldn’t have been possible without support from other survivors. Over the years, awareness of the horrors of human trafficking has galvanized the community to dedicate resources to pull more victims out of its nightmarish reality.

McManus, who now works as a freelance consultant tailoring programs for survivors of sexual exploitation, believes the government’s latest funding announcement for non-profits tackling the problem will take such efforts even further. Nineteen organizations in Alberta will soon receive $5.5 million from the province to address the growing problem.

The recipients of this grant include Rapid Exit from Sexual Exploitation & Trafficking (Reset Society of Calgary), the Salvation Army, the Alberta Centre for Human Trafficking and Tsuut’ina Nation.

“Each one of these organization builds partly brings a unique strength and innovative approach to any trafficking,” Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services Mike Ellis said at a news conference on Friday.

For instance, Reset, one of the oldest organizations in Calgary serving women escaping human trafficking, offers year-long supportive housing, trauma-related counselling and training in life skills to 28 women at a time. The non-profit will get a total of $400,000 from the province for this year and the next. The funding is the second iteration of the province’s initiative to address the problem.

Theresa Jenkins, executive director of the organization, said the financial assistance is “incredibly valuable.” It will fill an emergency fund dedicated to those who have recently broken away from exploitation. The funding addresses immediate needs such as mental health and addiction support, housing, and tattoo removal, which abusers use to label victims.

Jenkins said the landscape of human trafficking has changed over the decades with abusers using various methods, including social media, to lure mostly women. “It’s much more violent,” she said. “Back in the day, a lot of the trafficking was on the street level . . . a lot of it now has rolled into organized crime.”

Such issues have made mental health support key to rehabilitating victims. Most of the group’s programs are developed by survivors who host classes on co-dependency and addiction.

Jenkins said human trafficking has an outpouring of attention following the approval of federal Bill C-36, which criminalized the purchase of sexual services. “I think that that’s when a lot of different organizations started across Canada,” she added.