First Nations Community HealthSource will Conduct the Sex Trafficking Advocacy and Support Project

Under the statutory authority of 22 U.S.C. § 7105(b)(2), the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) administers discretionary grant award programs that promote the goals and purposes of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). The Project Beacon: Increasing Services to Urban American Indian and Alaska Native Victims of Sex Trafficking Program (Project Beacon) furthers the goals of the TVPA by increasing the quantity and quality of holistic victim-centered services available to assist American Indian and Alaska Native victims of sex trafficking in urban areas. By bridging the divide between urban American Indian and Alaska Native victims of sex trafficking and nonprofit, nongovernmental urban Indian centers, Project Beacon aims to provide such victims with access to services that meets their cultural, linguistic, and spiritual needs.

First Nations Community HealthSource (FNCH) is New Mexico’s Title V Urban Health Center, providing culturally competent comprehensive medical, dental, and behavioral healthcare to the 55,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives who reside in the City of Albuquerque. Since 1972 FNCH has offered consumer-driven healthcare and community health programming that promotes a holistic approach to wellness by integrating traditional American Indian, spiritual, cultural, and healing practices with Western medicine and evidence-based interventions. FNCH’s current menu of community health offerings include: a homelessness outreach initiative; Diabetes and HIV prevention programming; a youth mentoring program; a supportive housing assistance program; social services case management; a Women’s Infants and Children (WIC) program; and assistance with Medicaid enrollment.

FNCH will use the funding from its Project Beacon award to: (1) hire a full-time Lead Case Manager to manage FNCH’s efforts to develop and implement a plan for the delivery of comprehensive direct services to victims, as well as to lead FNCH’s efforts to build collaborative partnerships with a network of municipal, tribal, federal, and state agencies and private nonprofit organizations in order to facilitate seamless service delivery to victims across multiple systems; (2) hire a full-time Case Manager to provide direct services to victims and assist the Lead Case Manager in building collaborative partnerships and training staff from municipal, tribal, federal, and state agencies and private nonprofit organizations on how to deliver culturally appropriate interventions and responses to American Indian and Alaska Native victims of sex trafficking; (3) develop written memoranda of understanding with key municipal, tribal, state, and federal agencies, as well as private, nonprofit organizations, in order to outline the roles and responsibilities of each partner in ensuring the systemic response to American Indian and Alaska Native victims of trafficking is timely, culturally appropriate, and victim-centered; and (4) support costs associated with conducting a community education campaign to increase the public’s awareness and understanding of sex trafficking and how it impacts American Indians and Alaska Natives.

CA/NCF