The setup team for the 2024 Trauma to Triumph Gala, where Poiema staff and volunteers start the evening in a time of prayer over the event and the work God is doing through the foundation. (Photo / Ryan Hilton)

Originally published in Baptist Standard.

Poiema Foundation, a Dallas-area organization focused on human trafficking prevention and survivor care, has been working to educate the public on human trafficking, engage communities and empower survivors through the work of their safe house since 2012.

Natalie Alonzo, education and outreach director at Poiema Foundation, said she first got to know the organization when she volunteered with its community outreach in high school.

She volunteered through her church, LakePointe Church in Rockwall, which is where Poiema began in 2012. Alonzo said before she volunteered, she didn’t really know much about human trafficking.

But participating in outreach allowed her to see “right in [her] own community” what human trafficking looks like, even at hotels she drove past every day. The knowledge she gained grew into a passion.

After college, Alonzo worked directly with child victims of sex trafficking, until things came full circle, and she got the opportunity to join the staff of the Poiema Foundation.

Work with 4theOne

A group gathers to prayer at last year’s Trauma to Triumph gala for Poiema Foundation. (Photo / Ryan Hilton)

The foundation partners with 4theOne, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the location and recovery of missing and exploited teens. Volunteers from about 20 church campuses throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area and one in South Carolina, go out on Saturdays to hand out missing persons posters, hoping to find teens before traffickers do.

The volunteers make note of suspicious people and report any other concerns they observe to private investigators who volunteer with 4theOne, when they canvas an area, Alonzo explained. Statistics show the risk of missing teens being trafficked is high, she said, with most likely to be approached by a trafficker within 72 hours of hitting the streets.

Tipline calls from the flyers go directly to private investigators, so Poiema has no way of knowing for sure if a poster they handed out directly leads to a recovery, she said. But they do know the recovery rate from this partnership is high—492 minors have been recovered by 4theOne since the partnership began.

More than half of the recovered teens, 272 of them, were identified as having been victims of sex trafficking or some sort of sexual exploitation. Alonzo noted those numbers prove the statistics that missing and runaway kids are at risk from sexual predators.