Increase your Advocacy Skills

A strength-based approach creates opportunity for people to see themselves at their best in order to see their own value. This reflects inherent wisdom and encourages continued growth and self-advocacy for the future as people are able to focus on their strengths rather than their negative characteristics.

By better understanding the cultural and historical framework of the person you are supporting, you will help draw connections to healthy support systems within that individual's context. This honors and values their experience and meets their specific needs instead of applying a uniform approach that is limited in perspective and wisdom. 

The very real and present danger of the commercial and sexual exploitation is an important topic for advocates to increase their awareness. Learning how to increase self-agency and self-efficacy in a healthy peer relationship creates buffering supports that help establish sense of self and boundary setting, which decreases the potential for human trafficking.  

Some traditional models of human support use a top-down method, telling a person what they should do instead of valuing their internal wisdom. Trauma-informed advocacy techniques apply unconditional positive regard for the individual and create the felt safety required to reveal the next best steps.