The Eleison team is excited to announce our partnership with the California Baptist University (CBU) Division of Social Work to co-develop a community-based participatory research (CBPR) toolkit for social work educators and anti-human trafficking organizations. The project, entitled Survivor Voice, is funded through the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Katherine A. Kendall Institute for International Social Work Education grants program. Our joint project addresses a critical gap in social work education by introducing U.S. students to global issues of human trafficking through participatory research methods grounded in survivor voices and leadership.
Survivors’ voices have often not been centered in the anti-human trafficking movement, hindering the effectiveness of anti-trafficking programming and policy. Excluding survivors from decision-making processes reinforces harmful patterns from survivors’ trauma histories, including a lack of power, choice, and control. Through the Survivor Voice project, survivor leaders on Eleison’s Survivor Leadership Council (SLC) will co-create a comprehensive training toolkit for global CBPR projects, including Photovoice projects, in collaboration with social work faculty and students at CBU.
The final product will be a scalable, adaptable training toolkit that can be utilized by anti-human trafficking organizations and social work educators globally to introduce students and frontline workers to participatory research through a survivor-centered lens. The Survivor Voice project blends theoretical knowledge with practical, real-world applications. By collaborating with survivors and leveraging the SLC’s expertise in CBPR, the Survivor Voice project ensures an authentic learning experience, fostering student empathy, cultural competence, and the empowerment of communities through participatory action research.
