Give Amplify Connect

ACT Alberta: Youth Human Trafficking Education and Empowerment Program

• Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation • Episode 23

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Michelle Kauenhoffen from the Action Coalition on Human Trafficking (ACT Alberta) joins us to shed light on a critical but often misunderstood issue affecting communities across the province. As the Manager of Community Engagement at the only organization supporting victims of all forms of human trafficking throughout Alberta, Michelle brings valuable expertise on prevention, education, and direct support.

Michelle shares how ACT Alberta provides support for trafficking victims while developing education initiatives to protect vulnerable youth from exploitation. Through innovative partnerships and tailored trainings, they're working to dispel myths and equip communities with the knowledge to recognize and respond to trafficking.

  • ACT Alberta serves victims of all forms of trafficking and provides free education throughout the province
  • The Youth Empowerment Project was created in partnership with Crime Stoppers and Little Warriors to address the 815% increase in online exploitation
  • Training programs teach youth to identify healthy vs toxic relationships and recognize warning signs of exploitation
  • Both students and adults receive education to ensure everyone uses the same language and understanding
  • Common myths about trafficking include beliefs it "doesn't happen here" or only affects certain demographics
  • ACT improves lives by helping victims find safety, with positive impacts extending to their families
  • Free resources available include monthly Human Trafficking 101 sessions and customized sector-specific trainings

Visit actalberta.org to learn more, access the education form, or email education@actalberta.org to arrange a training for your school, workplace or community.

About Our Guest

With a strong background in social services and non-profits across the Prairies, Michelle Kauenhofen is a systems thinker who thrives in advocacy work, social justice, education, and community development. She brings a passion for raising awareness and empowering individuals to act, ensuring survivors’ voices are amplified and local efforts are united. Michelle is dedicated to fostering meaningful connections between diverse communities and advancing efforts to combat human trafficking.  Committed to ACT’s mission, she strives to inspire change and collaboratively build resilient networks that stand against exploitation.


What is Give Amplify Connect?

There’s a story behind every action. Give Amplify Connect is a podcast from the Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation that gives a voice to the Alberta-based charitable organizations creating community impact, changing lives, and making a difference. Driven by honest conversations with host Kristy Wolfe, it’s a chance for passionate changemakers to share their story.

Learn more at wolfepackwarriors.com

Podcast music used with artist permission
"Okay" by Ellen Braun


Michelle Kauenhofen:

So we want to give them a very well-rounded view how to engage in healthy relationships and friendships, how to recognize ones that are not, how to avoid exploitation and what to do if exploitation is potentially occurring.

Introduction:

Welcome to Give Amplify Connect, the Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation podcast that dives deeper into the stories of the charitable organizations in Alberta that are making a difference. Host and producer Kristy Wolf sits down with the leaders of the nonprofit world to learn more about their purpose, hopes and dreams. Settle in for an honest conversation with Kristy about the impact people are making in their communities and how they keep moving forward. The impact people are making in their communities and how they keep moving forward.

Kristy Wolfe:

With me today is Michelle Kauenhoffen, the Manager of Community Engagement at ACT Alberta. Right now, the Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation is amplifying the work of Crime Stoppers, and ACT is a partner that's working with Crime Stoppers, so we're going to learn more about their programming today. Michelle, will you introduce us to ACT and tell us what it stands for?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

Absolutely, Kristy. Thank you. Act Alberta stands for the Action Coalition on Human Trafficking, and we support and advocate for victims and survivors of human trafficking throughout the entire province. We're the only organization, in fact, that supports victims and survivors of any form of human trafficking, so that isn't exclusive, to say, sexual exploitation, or exclusive to labor trafficking. We are an umbrella organization that will serve anyone that has experienced human trafficking. We also increase knowledge and awareness of all forms of human trafficking through free education and training, and we lead and foster collective action through collaboration and respect, and that's how we ended up in a partnership with Alberta Crime Stoppers and Little Warriors on the Youth Empowerment Project.

Kristy Wolfe:

Will you tell us more about the Youth Empowerment Project? That is how I know about ACT NOW, so let's jump in and talk a little bit about that and then I will. I promise I'll get you to tell me more about yourself as well.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

Of course, I would love to tell you all about the Youth Empowerment Project. I joined ACT a year ago and when I became familiar with the many nuances and complexities of human trafficking, it became very clear how desperate the province needed education and awareness as a prevention for young people, because young people are targeted and at increased risk of exploitation. In fact, online exploitation has increased by 800 and something percent, according to Cybertipca I think it was like 815 percent. So we're seeing an increased demand for education awareness to prevent these skyrocketing numbers from increasing.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

So we joined, together with Alberta Crime Stoppers and with Little Warriors, because we, as ACT Alberta, can only serve adult victims and survivors of human trafficking, because if you are under the age of majority, you fall under PSECA legislation and the government is responsible for your care.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

So as a service agency, we cannot serve young people. However, we can educate young people, and so ACT Alberta has a history of tailored training for all kinds of sectors, all kinds of government agencies and social service agencies, health care providers, law enforcement. However, we did not have a training for young people, for parents and guardians, something that we could go in and perhaps teach to students across the province so that they would not be so vulnerable to online and in-person exploitation, and so that's where the collaboration came in, and Little Warriors clinically oversaw the content to make sure it was suitable for children grades 7 to 9, students grade 10 to 12, and also high-risk demographics. And then ACT has an Indigenous Relations Department, and we are also working collaboratively to make sure that what we bring into Indigenous communities and rural and northern communities is relevant to the audiences that we will be speaking to.

Kristy Wolfe:

Oh, I appreciate this. Thanks so much for explaining all of that. I do want to bring attention to the fact that actually, little Warriors is a group that Wolfpack Warriors Foundation has already worked with. Our very first Give Amplify Connect podcast was actually with their founder, without knowing, when we were getting involved with Crimestoppers, about all of these connections and that's one of the things I love about being in this space that we get to learn about different programs. I had not heard about ACT Alberta until Crime Stoppers started sharing with us what you're doing. Will you walk us through what a training for students might look like?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

Absolutely so.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

A training for students.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

We might start with a survey to see where they're at, so it also informs us.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

When we do a pre and a post survey to the training, then we can continually improve based on that feedback and make sure that we are conveying the information as we're hopeful to.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

So we're going to help students identify healthy versus toxic relationships, identify red flags of what could be going sideways, online or in person, in a relationship we're going to share stories of in real life that happen to people and make students aware of all of the dangers that could potentially exist when they're navigating a platform online or playing a game that they enjoy online, and we're also going to give them tools and tricks to understand how the process works, whether you're in line or on person the entire grooming process so that they can recognize it if it's happening to them or someone that they know. Now we're also going to provide resources that they can access if they feel they need support or know someone that needs support. So we want to give them a very well-rounded view how to engage in healthy relationships and friendships, how to recognize ones that are not, how to avoid exploitation and what to do if exploitation is potentially occurring.

Kristy Wolfe:

This is really interesting. I have a feeling that no students will be listening to this podcast. I will be honest, but I do think that educators, other people who work in the space with youth, as well as parents, might be listening. So, michelle, if people are interested in finding out more or learning how to get this training into their own community, what would you say?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

I would say go to the actalbertaorg website. We have an education form right on the website. We also have a landing page just for the Youth Empowerment Project with the executive summary right there. You can reach out at education at actalbertaorg anytime via email and we will book a training with you. Whatever it is you're looking for, whether it's for your staff team, whether it's for your mother's book group that's interested, we don't mind. Anyone that wants to learn is welcome to reach out and there is no cost to trainings.

Kristy Wolfe:

Well, and you and I were talking ahead of time, and we were talking about the fact that it can be in person, it could be virtual, it could be hybrid Can you walk us through what one of those trainings might look like, with adults specifically?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

Sure.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

So we, for example, I might get asked to go down to standoff into the Kainai Reserve and teach their frontline youth workers people that are engaging with youth every day and give them the sort of guardian educator version of the Youth Empowerment Project and then we might come back and teach all the young people and then everyone has the same language, Everyone understands the same concepts and it can really open up conversations and offer that wraparound care Virtually.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

I can give you an example of a virtual when the Jasper fires occurred, we got asked to speak to the temporary foreign workers that were involved up in Jasper at the time of the crisis and also the mayor of Jasper, and just speak to how to identify and respond to labor trafficking, how to recognize what your rights are as a worker in Canada. That virtually like we are right now on the podcast and we just share that information and make sure that our audiences, whatever their niche, is, that we're speaking relevant case studies and facts to what they're facing in their day-to-day and always offering those resources and connections so they know what to do in any given situation.

Kristy Wolfe:

Now Mark Hollick of Crimestoppers so he's the board chair of Crimestoppers has been on the podcast and he shared with us a lot about Crimestoppers and how his role there and what Crimestoppers does for the people that maybe I don't know live under a rock and haven't heard of Crimestoppers before. But when I think about what you're doing with ACT Alberta and Crimestoppers, how did that come to be?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

what you're doing with ACT, alberta and Crime Stoppers. How did that come to be? Well, you know, when I joined ACT last year, there was already something begun by Alberta Crime Stoppers and then they had some staff turnover, but what we saw in that initial project we wanted to continue. So we asked little warriors, let's just work on this and continue this. Staff changes don't change the need, and the need exists that this information and this education and these resources have to get out into the hands of community members, especially vulnerable young people, and the online exploitation is skyrocketing and there aren't enough gates and checks to prevent predators from accessing young people online. So we just moved forward and we started working on something. It took us almost a year and then we reconnected with Alberta Crime Stoppers and we're in pilot now, and so we're gathering lots of feedback and realizing how to tailor this to make it the most effective and get the best outcomes that we're hoping to achieve in terms of reducing and preventing exploitation from happening. I appreciate that Okay.

Kristy Wolfe:

you mentioned that you joined the group a year ago. How did you get involved? What brought?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

you to ACT. You know I've spent a career working in high-risk vulnerable populations. I started my career in corrections and I worked in addiction and I worked with a lot of young people. I spent some time overseeing John Howard programming in Saskatchewan and I'm a Winnipegger is where I'm actually from but when I came to Alberta and got to know the province and saw the ad well can you call it an ad when they were recruiting, when they were recruiting, I applied and I instantly felt like every role I'd ever had in terms of working with substance struggles or mental health struggles or poverty or homelessness or instability all these demographics that I'd served in my career.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

I now had an opportunity to speak and represent those demographics in a new way, and I had spent four years educating young people in secure services, which is a confinement setting for young people that are at risk to themselves or others but aren't criminally culpable to themselves or others but aren't criminally culpable, so they're not going into a young offenders program, but they need to be held and stabilized for their safety or the safety of the community. And so I had a lot of education experience and so I was ready to take that to the next level and start educating adults as well as young people. So when the Youth Empowerment Project when I saw it I got very excited as an opportunity to kind of streamline what I'd already been doing and add it to the portfolio of what ACT was doing. I guess it was love at first sight.

Kristy Wolfe:

It does sound like this was a perfect fit for your previous roles and just bringing you forward into this new piece oh, I love that. Okay, so how has this new role and this organization made a difference in your life?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

Oh my gosh, I was blown away by how many myths there are about human trafficking, and as someone that had served vulnerable populations and I just want to clarify, I'm mentioning vulnerable populations, however human trafficking happens to anyone, anytime, anywhere. But in my career path I've served vulnerable populations and I recognized, in learning more and more about human trafficking and becoming a subject matter expert in the human trafficking sector, that many of the individuals that I had served throughout my career path had actually been victims and survivors of human trafficking. But I didn't have that awareness because so few of us do. It's something that is very nuanced and complex and not well understood. Myths just prevail.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

I can go out in the community and if somebody asks me what I do or if I'm tabling for ACT, invariably I get the same responses and they sound like this Human trafficking doesn't happen here, we don't have that problem in Canada. We don't have that problem in this community. Oh, that only affects men. If we could just fix men, we wouldn't have these problems, and they're just all incorrect assumptions and attitudes about how human trafficking actually impacts communities every day all around us, and so I have to make a huge difference in my life in terms online exploitation and deteriorates their mental health to the point where they are suiciding, and we just can't have this continue due to a lack of education and awareness, because there are steps you can take to protect yourself, even if things have gone sideways online, but the community, and particularly young people, have no idea that these options exist. So I feel a strong passion to get that information out there, because it does change lives and it saves lives.

Kristy Wolfe:

Can you give an example of a story that is maybe coming to mind about how ACT has changed one of those lives? Are there any things coming up for you?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

Oh my gosh. We serve victims and survivors all the time. Our impact report is online and live right now, from 2024, with so many quotes of how ACT has impacted lives, and I'll just give you one example. And I'll just give you one example from that impact report. We supported a victim that came forward that was seeking a path to safety, and we meet victims and survivors where they're at and hear what they need and try and support. According to their lead quote, this victim's child said it's been a long time since I felt safe to go to sleep at night and in my own bed, you know and that was something that ACT was able to achieve by supporting this victim, and it, of course, had a trickle effect down to that person's children as well.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

So every time we go out in the community and we teach or train, it increases disclosures. We get more calls always. I've never been in a community where someone hasn't come back to me and said you know what I think? My sister, my aunt, my brother, my nephew is being trafficked in some other city. It just is so eye-opening for the listeners to realize and think about people. They know how relevant it is to each one of us. We're safe from it here in North America or here in Calgary or here in Canada. It's a global issue and it's happening every day, and the more we can spread awareness about what human trafficking looks like and what it is, the happier I'll be, because it saves lives.

Kristy Wolfe:

I am just thinking back to the way you described the youth empowerment program, and does it make more sense to have the adults working in that space do the training before they bring it to students or youth like have you noticed a difference there?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

we want to train both, so I personally don't care on the order, as long as it's kind of within the same week so everyone's speaking the same language. But absolutely we can't just train young people without training the adults in their lives. So we see it as a very well-rounded wraparound training that will impact families, because we would love guardians and parents to come in the evening, either the evening before we train the students or the evening of, so that everyone is communicating the same way and using the same language with the same understanding.

Kristy Wolfe:

Now for people that are listening that maybe are like oh, this sounds great, I would like to learn more before I bring it to my organization. Is there a time that you do almost like an open enrollment People can register to join a training or do they get set up on their training on their own or plan it with you?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

We have monthly offerings that we do all the time that people can sign up for on our website. So we have it's called Human Trafficking 101. One month it's for community members and the second month is for social service providers, and it's double the length, depending how deep you want to go. So I would say for anyone interested, HT 101 is the way to start, because obviously Human Trafficking 101 is what we're going to teach young people as well in ways that will land for them relevantly right, and so parents and guardians, educators, will benefit from even just taking that Lunch and Learn offering that we have. They can also go to the education booking form on our website if they're looking for something very specific like hey, I'm a teacher in a high school or in a post-secondary. There's a group of us that would love a training on what we should be looking for in our setting and how to identify and respond to human trafficking that we might come across or suspect.

Kristy Wolfe:

How can people give, amplify or connect with ACT Alberta? I mean, we've mentioned a number of different things already, but is there other things that you're thinking that you'd like to also be able to mention?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

There's plenty of ways to support ACT financially, of course. Ways to give goes directly to make sure that the education, awareness and prevention pieces can continue moving forward, that the support direct support, even to simple basic needs, to victims and survivors, is continuing. That's all available on our website. Of course, engaging with the Youth Empowerment Project and learning how to educate the young people in your life would also be helpful. As we're in pilot for this project, we'd love to see it go far and wide. I was going to mention too, in the impact, like last year, we did 42 separate tailored trainings to over 1,400 participants. So ACT, even if we have not yet trained a particular sector, we develop a very specific tailored training for every sector. So if you are at a workplace and you're like we don't even talk about human trafficking, I don't know anything about it, and you're interested again, just reach out to education at actalbertaorg.

Kristy Wolfe:

The question I love to end with is tell us about an organization or a person that you've worked with that inspires you.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

Oh, oh. I could get so personal about people, but what my plan was was to highlight Little Warriors, because you focused on Alberta Crime Stoppers with Mark from the board there, and I don't know if Little Warriors has had a chance to speak on the Youth Empowerment Project. But the work that Little Warriors and the Be Brave branch do is so unique and so necessary. In fact, they serve young people globally because there's so few programs for the work that they do and so I feel very inspired by the work they do and was honored to do a little tour last month of the Be Brave Ranch and we piloted to some of the young people that they were serving with the Youth Empowerment Project. So I would love to share Little Warriors and the work that they do for child sexual abuse.

Kristy Wolfe:

Thanks so much, Michelle. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you wanted to talk about?

Michelle Kauenhofen:

Gosh. I mean, I could talk about human trafficking all day dispelling myths, and I would love to stand here and go. You know how many people out there listening think human trafficking looks like this. But I'm going to save all those details for the trainings that people might be interested in and leave it there.

Kristy Wolfe:

I definitely was thinking about when I can do the training.

Kristy Wolfe:

I think that even in the community that I'm in I live in Canmore, in the Bow Valley, and the hospitality sector is coming to mind. And I mean, michelle, you've already told me that I have to be careful of myths and like just making assumptions around like human trafficking it can happen anywhere. But that's one of the things that was coming to mind. There's a few organizations that I would like to make sure I send this to so that they can listen and kind of see if it is a fit for them to learn more about. So thank you so much for coming on and talking about human trafficking, about the reality that kids and youth need to be hearing about this and learning about it. Sometimes I think that we feel that we shouldn't be talking about this with youth because it might happen more or there's all those different things that people are like oh no, we need to protect them. But I think having open conversations is really how we get started with making sure that everybody knows what to do if they're seeing this in the communities around them.

Michelle Kauenhofen:

So thanks again for coming on that school, the secretary shared that her own child had experienced sextortion and didn't feel safe, coming forward, in fact drained his bank account to the perpetrator and only in complete and utter despair finally brought it to his parents' attention and they involved law enforcement. So if through the Youth Empowerment Project we can prevent that from happening, where young people feel safe long before they're draining their bank accounts, long before they're completely overwhelmed and their mental health is on the decline, then that's super valuable.

Kristy Wolfe:

Now. I'm so glad you brought up that story right at the end. That's a perfect way to end this, michelle. Thanks again for coming on. I'm so glad you brought up that story right at the end. That's a perfect way to end this, michelle. Thanks again for coming on. Thank you for joining us today. The purpose of the Wolfe Pack Warriors Foundation is to give, amplify and connect. Visit our website www. wolfepackwarriors. com to learn more about this initiative or connect with us about a registered charity that is important to you. Don't miss the next episode. Follow Give, amplify, connect on your favourite podcast platform to hear from other Alberta-based nonprofits about the work they are doing. On a final note, remember to take care of yourself and your pack.

Introduction:

Okay, hush, my darling, gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay.

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Kristy Wolfe

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