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RISE to acquire building to expand

Muskogee Phoenix - 1/19/2022

Jan. 19—An additional facility can help the RISE shelter help more girls escape and recover from sex trafficking and exploitation, the shelter's director said.

RISE — Restoring Identities after Sexual Exploitation — has a seven-bed facility in Muskogee County, RISE Executive Director Keri Spencer said.

"In this facility, we do it all," she said. "The girls live here, sleep here, eat here, shower here — this is their home. This is also where they go to school, where they have counseling, where they have life skills classes and job skills classes. They do it all here."

Spencer said RISE is working with the Wells Fargo financial services company to secure a recently-foreclosed building near Fort Gibson.

"They have a home donation program, and we walked through their application process and and documentation process and they approved the process," she said.

RISE will be able to move some of its services to the other building, she said.

"We're going to move our classroom, we're going to move our fitness equipment and our counseling offices to that facility, and move a couple of offices over there," she said. "That will be a day-use facility. What that will look like is that our girls will get up in the morning and they will have their breakfast here. They'll get up and go to that building, just like normal kids would go to school."

The acquisition will enable the shelter to add two beds, Spencer said.

"I'll take two of our offices and turn them into bedrooms," she said. "Nine beds clearly doesn't fix the problem, or the shortage, but it's still two more beds."

Spencer said the shelter receives two to three calls each week about girls needing help. She said the girls usually stay nine to 12 months. Girls from other states, as far away as New Jersey, have stayed at the shelter, Spencer said.

"They're recovered by law enforcement, by DHS (Department of Human Service) and other situations," she said. "Most of our girls have been removed from their trafficking situation for a little bit of time before they actually come here."

Human trafficking, particularly sex trafficking, is a problem across the United States and Oklahoma, she said.

"In 2020 alone, the National Trafficking Hotline took 52,667 calls, and of those, 2.145 were minors involved in sex trafficking — prostitution, dancing in strip clubs, internet pornography, massage parlors, home-based prostitution," she said. For the State of Oklahoma in 2020, the national human trafficking hotline took 384 calls, that's an average of 32 a month."

She said the second RISE location will be named Makayla's Place, in honor of a former RISE resident who died last year, shortly before turning 18. She said the girl was an Arkansas resident who struggled with substance abuse.

RISE needs donors and volunteers willing to help convert the building into the day facility, Spencer said.

"We have a team of local partners who are willing to do the contracting, planning and coordinating of the work, and they expect it to take three to six months," she said. "So I am hoping that August or September, in time for the new school year, that we will be utilizing that second building."

Spencer said RISE needs money, as well as donations of materials and supplies, such as lumber, drywall, paint, electrical wiring and plumbing fixtures. She said the shelter is trying to work within a $50,000 budget to convert the building.

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