The New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking is a survivor-inclusive organization that coordinates statewide community efforts to end sex and labor trafficking taking place in New Jersey. Our mission is to unite the state’s communities to end human trafficking by organizing speaking events, outreach, educational programs, and policy advocacy. We aim to help communities empower residents with the knowledge of what human trafficking is, how to prevent it, and how to support those affected by it. To date, we have successfully advocated for the 2013 New Jersey Prevention, Protection, and Treatment Act, which passed unanimously and is now law, and have educated 7,100+ community members including students, educators, law enforcement, healthcare workers, and the public sector about the issue of human trafficking, have reached 900+ hotels and motels across 9 New Jersey counties, providing critical resources in multiple languages to help prevent trafficking in their establishments, and last year we hired 28 lived experience consultants to inform, teach about how we can make our organization the most effective organization in the United States that is fighting human trafficking. NJCAHT is volunteer-led with no office space, (with the exception of one person working 10 hours a week on technology), and our volunteers are located throughout the entire state of NJ.

When you invest in the NJ FREEDOM GALA on MAY 17, 2023, at the Bridgewater Manor, you invest in improving our children’s lives by helping to keep them safe from human traffickers. The New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking (NJCAHT), Tax ID 81-4523578, is a survivor-inclusive volunteer-run organization that coordinates statewide community efforts to end sex and labor trafficking taking place in New Jersey. We aim to help communities empower residents with the knowledge of what human trafficking is, how to prevent it, and how to support those affected by it. 

The NJ FREEDOM GALA is designed to celebrate human trafficking survivors and their role in making New Jersey safer for everyone. We have been fortunate to have Gina Cavallo, a Sought-After Leader, Speaker, and Mentor, as our Survivor Consultant. Gina has testified many times in the New Jersey State House, ensuring the passage of our bills. It was especially poignant to her to testify on behalf of the bill to clear criminal records, because, as she says: “Without the New Jersey Coalition Against Human Trafficking, I would not have found the Volunteer Lawyers for Justice, who worked to clear my own records in other states. Working as the NJCAHT’s Survivor Consultant and serving on their Board of Trustees has helped me become the leader I am today.”  

The funds we hope you will help us raise at the NJ FREEDOM GALA will support our free online and in-person programming, our school lesson plans, and our Speaker’s Bureau, and will enable us to continue to employ our amazing Survivor Consultant and the dozens of other lived experience experts she brings to the table, empowering them to educate our communities. 

Our legislative successes to date have included helping to pass the 2013 NJ Prevention, Protection, and Treatment Act, a comprehensive bill that created safety for victims, training for law enforcement and others, and ensuring that traffickers received jail sentences and penalties commensurate with their crimes. We testified on a bill to bring human trafficking awareness into schools, which became law in 2019, enabling us to work with the NJ Department of Education to create the Guidelines for Schools on the Prevention of Human Trafficking of Students. In January 2022, a bill we authored that enabled survivors to clear the criminal records they had acquired as a result of being trafficked was passed into law. We have also educated 7,100+ community members including students, educators, law enforcement, healthcare workers, and the public sector about the issue of human trafficking; have reached 900+ hotels and motels across 9 counties in NJ, providing critical resources in multiple languages to help prevent trafficking in their establishments; and over the last year we hired 28 lived experience consultants from around the nation to inform, teach and present free awareness programming to the public, making us one of the most survivor-inclusive coalitions in the country.