June 18, 2025 • 23 mins
In this conversation, Stephanie Olson, CEO and founder of the Set Me Free Project, discusses the evolution of her organization and its new podcast, focusing on resilience and relationships. She shares insights into the project's origins, its educational curriculum aimed at youth, and the impact of COVID-19 on their operations. The conversation highlights the importance of addressing human trafficking and trauma while fostering healthy relationships and outlines the project's expansion and funding strategies.
Takeaways
The Set Me Free Project focuses on resilience and relationships.
The podcast will cover topics related to trauma and healthy relationships.
The organization started in Omaha, Nebraska, addressing human trafficking.
Curriculum development was driven by the need for youth education.
COVID-19 prompted a shift to digital learning and outreach.
The project has expanded its reach to nearly 10 states.
Funding comes from private grants and individual donors.
The curriculum aims to be engaging and not fear-based.
The organization trains facilitators to effectively educate youth.
Future plans include writing a book on youth safety and human trafficking.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Set Me Free Project
02:17 Revamping Resilience: New Directions
05:08 The Journey of the Set Me Free Project
12:29 Adapting to Change: The Impact of COVID-19
18:50 Curriculum Development and Expansion
20:37 Looking Ahead: Future of the Podcast
22:57 R&R Outro.mp4
Everyone has resilience, but what does that mean, and how do we use it in life and leadership? Join Stephanie Olson, an expert in resiliency and trauma, every week as she talks to other experts living lives of resilience. Stephanie also shares her own stories of addictions, disordered eating, domestic and sexual violence, abandonment, and trauma, and shares the everyday struggles and joys of everyday life. As a wife, mom, and CEO she gives commentaries and, sometimes, a few rants to shed light on what makes a person resilient. So, if you have experienced adversity in life in any way and want to learn how to better lead your family, your workplace, and, well, your life, this podcast is for you!
https://setmefreeproject.net
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Stephanie,
Stephanie Olson (00:18):
hello. I'm Stephanie Olson, the CEO and
founder of the set me freeproject, and also somebody who
did the podcast of resilience inlife and leadership. Now, if you
have listened to that podcast atall, you have heard me say
something similar to, I'm back,or I'm going to do this again,
(00:41):
or whatever the case may be,here's what I'm going to tell
you. I am back, but I'm back alittle differently, and I'm
going to kind of give you thestory and give you the whole
update and all of the thingsthat have been going on, but the
set me free project is doingamazing things, and we have been
(01:03):
wanting to do a podcast forever. In fact, we tried to do a
podcast some time ago, and itdidn't work, and we have a
YouTube channel, and it's notthriving yet. We do some stuff
on Tiktok and things like that,but our our podcast or our
(01:25):
YouTube channel or whatever,just never really got up and
running. And part of that isbecause I was putting a lot of
effort into resilience in lifeand leadership. Some of that was
just because we didn't know whatto talk about. And I'll explain
that in a little bit too. Buthere is what is happening. We
(01:47):
have now revamped resilience inlife and leadership, and we're
making all these changes. Okay,so here's what the changes are.
First of all, we are still doingsomething about resilience, but
I'm going to share this withyou. Here we go. Bear with me. I
(02:08):
am sharing this okay. Here itis, resilience and
relationships. So we're stilldoing a resilience piece. But I
also want to add the set me freeproject with it. And so no
(02:29):
longer is it just going to beStephanie Olson resilience in
life and leadership. It is goingto be resilience and
relationships, real talk forreal life with Stephanie Olson
and the set me free projectteam, yay. How cool is that? I
think it's cool. So we're goingto change things up a little
bit, and we want to hear fromyou. We want to hear what you
(02:51):
want to hear about. We want tohear about what is important to
you. But we do have a list, arunning list, of things that
we're going to be talking about,and some of the things might be
obviously about humantrafficking. We're going to talk
about human trafficking and andMS and facts, and the things
(03:12):
that are happening and thethings that are not happening.
We might talk about some of thepeople that are being accused of
human trafficking, definitelypeople who have been convicted
of human trafficking. But we'renot going to limit it to human
trafficking, and I think that'san important piece. We're going
(03:33):
to talk about all things sexualviolence. And I know what you're
saying. You're like, yeah, okay,this sounds like a fun podcast.
Don't worry, here's what I willtell you. We're also going to
talk about things that arereally pertinent to all of us.
We're going to talk about traumaand how to deal with trauma in
the workplace. How do you handletrauma on a daily basis? We're
(03:55):
going to talk about parenting.
How do you parent youth in thisday and age, especially with
technology, we're going to talkabout, how do you talk to your
kiddos about human traffickingand technology? There's a lot of
stuff that we are going to talkabout, but we also want to hear
from you. We're going to talkabout relationships, healthy
(04:16):
relationships versus unhealthyrelationships. How can you be a
good friend? How can you be agood partner, whatever, all of
the things. We don't want tolimit this podcast and we want
to bring in anything that'sabout resilience and
relationships. Because here'sthe reality, everything the set
(04:37):
me free project does is aboutresilience, and it's about
relationships. So for those ofyou who haven't followed the
journey, or have only followedportions of the journey, let me
just share a little bit aboutwhat the set me free project is
and does, and then I want toshare with. You kind of the
(04:59):
direction we've been going, andthen we're going to launch into
some amazing things. So the sentme free project. We started
about 11 years ago to date, atthe time of this podcast. So it
was 1919, okay, here's the deal.
It's been a long month. So bearwith me. I am old. I'll give you
(05:25):
that, but not that old. Okay, sowe started the set me free
project, 2015 in 2015 and westarted because there were a lot
of good things happening in ourarea. And for the record, I am
personally in Omaha, Nebraska.
We'll talk about that too,because we are no longer a local
organization. We haven't beenfor a long time, but we'll talk
(05:48):
about that. So I am in Omaha,Nebraska, in Omaha, believe it
or not, human trafficking is ahot spot. There were a lot of
really good things happening inthe area of human trafficking,
as far as counter traffickinggoes, but very much on the
recovery and restoration side.
Now that's important, thatrecovery and restoration piece
(06:10):
really important. But what werecognized was that nobody was
talking to our youth. No one wastalking to the people who served
youth or parents, caregivers,and that's really how we began.
I started the organization withCindy halting, who was my co
(06:32):
founder at the time, greatfriend. Love. Cindy no longer
with the organization anymore,and she was an amazing integral
part in where we are today. So Ijust want to give kudos to Cindy
halting, love you girl. Soanyway, we decided that we
(06:53):
needed to do something about thefact that our youth, our kids,
because at the time our kidswere in elementary middle
school, were not hearing aboutthis topic, and yet, we knew
that it didn't look like themovie Taken or whatever new
movie today, that it washappening in our community. It
(07:13):
was happening in our schools, itwas happening in our homes with
social media. And it was ourkids that were at risk, and
that's what we saw. So we hadtalked to a couple of great
educators in our area, and theysaid, Go find a curriculum and
bring it to us, and we will getyou in front of administration.
(07:36):
Then you're on your own. Well,we looked, we looked and looked
and looked for a solidcurriculum, because I didn't
want to reinvent the wheel. Thatis, that is a lot of work, and
we couldn't find anything thatwas number one, not fear based.
Number two, that was written foryouth, and number three, that
(07:57):
wasn't just just kind of bad.
And so we wrote, and, yeah,okay, that was me. I was more
the outside the face, the persontalking Cindy was the behind the
scenes, the money person, thebrains. And I wrote a curriculum
for youth, middle schooland high school, and parents and
(08:18):
caregivers on human traffickingand social media safety, and
presented it to this schooldistrict. And what do you know?
They were impressed. We had ameeting with them at in the
middle of the month, and then atthe end of the month, I was
speaking to all of their socialworkers and counselors in the
school district, and we were inthe schools, and we sent out one
(08:39):
mass email to two schooldistricts in our community, and
for at least four years, wenever did any outreach. That was
fast, that was schools don'twork like that, just FYI. So
clearly, someone was on our sidethere. And clearly, school
(09:00):
personnel saw the need for this.
They recognized that it wasreally important that we have
this. So we grew over those thattime to about 400 plus schools
in, I think, at least fourstates. So we were in at the
time, Nebraska, Iowa, SouthDakota, some reaching Kansas,
(09:24):
and we were constantly busy. Wewere the ones going into the
school. We were the ones talkingto youth in the schools, talking
about the importance ofunderstanding what human
trafficking is and social mediasafety. Now here's the thing
that we did a littledifferently. I told you that all
(09:46):
of that curriculum that I found,and there wasn't a lot, but the
curriculum I found was very fearbased. Now what we did was we
added a lot of engagement, a lotof activities, and, yes, a lot
of. Humor. And we always havesaid we take our topic very
seriously. We don't takeourselves very seriously. And
(10:06):
what we did was come at it froma pedagogy standpoint, from an
education standpoint, and so wewanted our learners to respond
in a certain way. We wanted itto be about critical thinking,
not about us with a PowerPointand telling people what was
going on, but we really wantedour learners to respond in a way
(10:29):
that they retained. Studies haveshown that retention is better
when there is humor. And wewanted our students to want us
to come back. We didn't want tobe one and done. We wanted to
continue to come back. And so wewould go back every quarter,
(10:50):
every semester, every year,depending on the school. We did
that. But again, it was allabout critical thinking, that we
would ask questions and thenhave conversations surrounding
that. Now we did the same thingwith adults, and we started at
the time with, I said, middleschool and high school for
(11:11):
youth, and we started withparents and caregivers. We
expanded that over time. And sowith our youth curriculum, we
expanded that in 2015 from thirdgrade through 12th grade for
youth talking about humantrafficking, primarily sex
trafficking at that time,healthy relationships versus
(11:34):
unhealthy relationships andsocial media safety. So we had
three specific pieces that wewere talking to youth about and
then we expanded the humantrafficking piece of the
curriculum to adults, and so notjust parents and caregivers, but
school personnel. We added thefinancial system, we added
foster care, and so we startedadding to our pieces. Well, that
(11:56):
was going really well. We werebleeding money, I will tell you
that because we were the ones wehad brought in groups of
educators. We were the onesgoing into the schools. We were
traveling all over the place,and it was just a really
exciting time, but COVID hit,and
COVID really turned us inward,to really be introspective of
(12:21):
what do we need to do, what isgoing to work, what is not going
to work. Well, here's what wefound out very quickly as an in
person organization, really hardto be in person during COVID. I
think all of you know COVID kindof took a lot of people out.
Certainly a lot oforganizations, but we definitely
(12:45):
could not be in person withCOVID. And so we decided we're
going to go digital. We're goingto do what we can to go digital.
Well, when COVID subsided, westarted to go back like we had
been, but we realized schoolswere different, youth were
different. It was just adifferent world. And and I think
(13:07):
COVID created some reallypositive changes in our world.
In fact, the virtual aspect justblew up. And we can have people
working from home, and we havethe technology and the capacity
to do that, and that's awesome,but there were a lot of really
difficult things that happenedduring COVID as well. Teachers
started to leave in mass exodus.
Youth were coming backbehaviorally different, like
(13:32):
developmentally younger, andpart of that was because they
were at home. They weren'tgetting socialized, and there
were just a lot of changes, andwe saw it firsthand. It was then
that we really came to the factthat we need to expand to more
youth, and we're not going to beable to expand and reach more
(13:56):
youth by us going in in person.
And so it was at that time, andthat's the pivot, right? I think
that anybody who worked throughCOVID and made it past COVID had
to pivot. Everybody had topivot. And so that's what we
did. So we took a year off andjust really looked at our
(14:20):
curriculum. How do we createthis curriculum for
facilitators? How do we createthis curriculum for individuals
who want to use it, who serveyouth and get it out there? We
really were thinking at thetime, schools exclusively, not
exclusively, but that's whowould be, kind of our market.
(14:43):
And so we wrote it forfacilitators, and we created
this curriculum, kind of like atrain, the trainer, but it was
really intense training, the twoday intense training. But then
more than that, we. We're like,we're going to support these
people throughout the year, andthen they can recertify and we
(15:05):
can continue to support them.
Because what we didn't want todo is just hand over our
curriculum and say, good luck,because we know that's not
effective. We wanted to makesure that people knew how to
serve youth, how to educateyouth, because it is very
different. So that's what wedecided to do, and we kind of
changed up our youth curriculum,and then our adults, we were
training in person. Well, whathappened was that we found that
(15:29):
agencies were the ones who weretypically reaching out, that
there were some schools who wereinterested. But I think we all
know schools are swamped anddoing a ton of work and really
responsible for a lot. And so itwas agencies who came forward
and said, We want this. We wantthis curriculum for our
(15:51):
community. We want to go intothe schools. We want to do this.
And that's really where kind ofthe sweet spot was we started to
get the curriculum into hands ofagencies, especially people who
served youth and train them, andthey were facilitating, aha, but
one of our agencies said, No, wewant to serve the community. We
(16:16):
want to serve adults too. And sowe took all of our adult
curriculum and made it intofacilitation curriculum, and now
we have all of our curriculumthat we can train people on to
facilitate, from kindergartenthrough 12th grade for youth and
then adults of every facet ofthe community. So college age,
(16:39):
law enforcement, medical, coffeeshops, salons, school personnel,
all of that has stepped parents,community that stayed the same,
but adding the financialinstitute, hospitality and all
of those things, well, then wewent a step further, and we
created online courses. We'vecreated an online course for
(17:02):
individuals, just kind ofgeneric industry, or generic
this is what you need to know,and that can be found on our
website for purchase at a veryreasonable price. And and then
we created for corporations sohospitality to use for
onboarding, and we're continuingto create those, but now we are
(17:23):
in the process of creating aparent and caregiver
specifically for how do you talkto your youth about human
trafficking? How do you talk toyour youth about social media
safety? And we're writing a bookon that. Now, what I didn't
mention is, during all of thistime when we started to get our
(17:43):
curriculum out there andactually get our curriculum in
the hands of agencies andschools and things like that, we
we went national. It was reallyexciting to see what happened.
We started getting requests fromall over the nation, and we have
now expanded into almost 10states now, and we're continuing
(18:06):
to do that amazing work. What'sreally cool about the
curriculum, and I will tell you,we have an incredible director
of programming, RebeccaSaunders, who you will meet
because she will be on thispodcast. And we have an amazing
director of operations, EricaZettel, who you will also meet,
because she will be on thispodcast, but we have 30 plus
(18:28):
pieces of curriculum now, whichis unbelievable to me when we
started over, you know, aholiday break writing curriculum
for middle schoolers and highschoolers one piece and one for
parents and caregivers. It'sastounding to see how this has
grown. So that's kind of what'shappening with the set me free
(18:51):
project. It has been a reallyexciting time. It's been an
exciting time to see thedirection we're moving. And, you
know, people always ask one ofthe questions I get is, where do
you get your funding? Well, Iwould say the majority of our
funding comes from privategrants and individual donors. We
do have income through ourcurriculum, which is great. I
(19:15):
think every single nonprofitshould have an income base
somewhere, and so that issomething that we do. But then
we also have a couple of federalgrants. And in fact, we do have
a federal grant through the CDCthat will make our curriculum,
ultimately, when we're done, oneof the first rigorously reviewed
(19:35):
or evidence based youthcurriculum on human trafficking
in the nation, which is veryexciting. So it has been an
exciting journey. I think aboutthe early times when it was just
Cindy and me, you know, me goinginto a school, and Cindy doing
the finances behind the scenes.
(19:58):
And, you know, of course, at.
First it was really easy for herto do finances, because even I
know zero plus zero, it equalszero. So it's just been an
exciting journey. But we aregoing to be podcasting for you,
and kind of for us, because Ilike it. I think it's super fun
to do and have theseconversations, and a lot of them
(20:20):
are conversations we haveanyway, so why not have them
with you as a part of it? Sotrying to think, if there is
anything else I want to sharewith you outside of the exciting
stuff of the podcast, so youwill still be able to listen to
all of the past, resilience inlife and leadership. Those will
(20:43):
be available, but we'll have anew look. It will be on the set
me free project website, andjust some new topics and new
people and conversations. Soreally excited with what we're
going to be doing. I think I'vesaid that quite a few times, but
let us know. Follow our socials.
(21:06):
Follow us on socials. We areliterally, I think, on the
majority of them, Facebook,Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok,
YouTube. Follow us on oursocials. Share them. Please give
us reviews, five stars, please.
If you don't like it, just letus know. Anyway, we are really
excited. Yeah, I think I've saidthat 15 times. So we are ready
(21:30):
to go enjoy R and R resilienceand relationships where, okay, I
got to get the tag here, realtalk for real life, and you will
get me, but also the set me freeproject team. All of those
people are much, much smarterthan I am, and I am really
(21:54):
excited to share them with you.
Let us know what you want tohear, please, and we can't wait
to talk to you more. I have tothink of a cool tagline to end
with. Yeah, real talk, reallife. Keep talking,
(22:15):
keep real, keep living life.
I'll work on that. So thank youfor listening. Cannot wait to
see you again. Oh, and before Iforget, our goal is to have
these out every month, once amonth, and I don't know well,
we'll work on like a day, but wemay have them more often. We'll
(22:38):
see but thank you for listening.
We can't wait to see you nexttime, and I appreciate it. Get
some R and R. Maybe that's ourtagline. Get some R and R, I
don't know. Let me know what youthink. Bye. You
Stephanie,
Stephanie Olson (00:18):
hello. I'm Stephanie Olson, the CEO and
founder of the set me freeproject, and also somebody who
did the podcast of resilience inlife and leadership. Now, if you
have listened to that podcast atall, you have heard me say
something similar to, I'm back,or I'm going to do this again,
(00:41):
or whatever the case may be,here's what I'm going to tell
you. I am back, but I'm back alittle differently, and I'm
going to kind of give you thestory and give you the whole
update and all of the thingsthat have been going on, but the
set me free project is doingamazing things, and we have been
(01:03):
wanting to do a podcast forever. In fact, we tried to do a
podcast some time ago, and itdidn't work, and we have a
YouTube channel, and it's notthriving yet. We do some stuff
on Tiktok and things like that,but our our podcast or our
(01:25):
YouTube channel or whatever,just never really got up and
running. And part of that isbecause I was putting a lot of
effort into resilience in lifeand leadership. Some of that was
just because we didn't know whatto talk about. And I'll explain
that in a little bit too. Buthere is what is happening. We
(01:47):
have now revamped resilience inlife and leadership, and we're
making all these changes. Okay,so here's what the changes are.
First of all, we are still doingsomething about resilience, but
I'm going to share this withyou. Here we go. Bear with me. I
(02:08):
am sharing this okay. Here itis, resilience and
relationships. So we're stilldoing a resilience piece. But I
also want to add the set me freeproject with it. And so no
(02:29):
longer is it just going to beStephanie Olson resilience in
life and leadership. It is goingto be resilience and
relationships, real talk forreal life with Stephanie Olson
and the set me free projectteam, yay. How cool is that? I
think it's cool. So we're goingto change things up a little
bit, and we want to hear fromyou. We want to hear what you
(02:51):
want to hear about. We want tohear about what is important to
you. But we do have a list, arunning list, of things that
we're going to be talking about,and some of the things might be
obviously about humantrafficking. We're going to talk
about human trafficking and andMS and facts, and the things
(03:12):
that are happening and thethings that are not happening.
We might talk about some of thepeople that are being accused of
human trafficking, definitelypeople who have been convicted
of human trafficking. But we'renot going to limit it to human
trafficking, and I think that'san important piece. We're going
(03:33):
to talk about all things sexualviolence. And I know what you're
saying. You're like, yeah, okay,this sounds like a fun podcast.
Don't worry, here's what I willtell you. We're also going to
talk about things that arereally pertinent to all of us.
We're going to talk about traumaand how to deal with trauma in
the workplace. How do you handletrauma on a daily basis? We're
(03:55):
going to talk about parenting.
How do you parent youth in thisday and age, especially with
technology, we're going to talkabout, how do you talk to your
kiddos about human traffickingand technology? There's a lot of
stuff that we are going to talkabout, but we also want to hear
from you. We're going to talkabout relationships, healthy
(04:16):
relationships versus unhealthyrelationships. How can you be a
good friend? How can you be agood partner, whatever, all of
the things. We don't want tolimit this podcast and we want
to bring in anything that'sabout resilience and
relationships. Because here'sthe reality, everything the set
(04:37):
me free project does is aboutresilience, and it's about
relationships. So for those ofyou who haven't followed the
journey, or have only followedportions of the journey, let me
just share a little bit aboutwhat the set me free project is
and does, and then I want toshare with. You kind of the
(04:59):
direction we've been going, andthen we're going to launch into
some amazing things. So the sentme free project. We started
about 11 years ago to date, atthe time of this podcast. So it
was 1919, okay, here's the deal.
It's been a long month. So bearwith me. I am old. I'll give you
(05:25):
that, but not that old. Okay, sowe started the set me free
project, 2015 in 2015 and westarted because there were a lot
of good things happening in ourarea. And for the record, I am
personally in Omaha, Nebraska.
We'll talk about that too,because we are no longer a local
organization. We haven't beenfor a long time, but we'll talk
(05:48):
about that. So I am in Omaha,Nebraska, in Omaha, believe it
or not, human trafficking is ahot spot. There were a lot of
really good things happening inthe area of human trafficking,
as far as counter traffickinggoes, but very much on the
recovery and restoration side.
Now that's important, thatrecovery and restoration piece
(06:10):
really important. But what werecognized was that nobody was
talking to our youth. No one wastalking to the people who served
youth or parents, caregivers,and that's really how we began.
I started the organization withCindy halting, who was my co
(06:32):
founder at the time, greatfriend. Love. Cindy no longer
with the organization anymore,and she was an amazing integral
part in where we are today. So Ijust want to give kudos to Cindy
halting, love you girl. Soanyway, we decided that we
(06:53):
needed to do something about thefact that our youth, our kids,
because at the time our kidswere in elementary middle
school, were not hearing aboutthis topic, and yet, we knew
that it didn't look like themovie Taken or whatever new
movie today, that it washappening in our community. It
(07:13):
was happening in our schools, itwas happening in our homes with
social media. And it was ourkids that were at risk, and
that's what we saw. So we hadtalked to a couple of great
educators in our area, and theysaid, Go find a curriculum and
bring it to us, and we will getyou in front of administration.
(07:36):
Then you're on your own. Well,we looked, we looked and looked
and looked for a solidcurriculum, because I didn't
want to reinvent the wheel. Thatis, that is a lot of work, and
we couldn't find anything thatwas number one, not fear based.
Number two, that was written foryouth, and number three, that
(07:57):
wasn't just just kind of bad.
And so we wrote, and, yeah,okay, that was me. I was more
the outside the face, the persontalking Cindy was the behind the
scenes, the money person, thebrains. And I wrote a curriculum
for youth, middle schooland high school, and parents and
(08:18):
caregivers on human traffickingand social media safety, and
presented it to this schooldistrict. And what do you know?
They were impressed. We had ameeting with them at in the
middle of the month, and then atthe end of the month, I was
speaking to all of their socialworkers and counselors in the
school district, and we were inthe schools, and we sent out one
(08:39):
mass email to two schooldistricts in our community, and
for at least four years, wenever did any outreach. That was
fast, that was schools don'twork like that, just FYI. So
clearly, someone was on our sidethere. And clearly, school
(09:00):
personnel saw the need for this.
They recognized that it wasreally important that we have
this. So we grew over those thattime to about 400 plus schools
in, I think, at least fourstates. So we were in at the
time, Nebraska, Iowa, SouthDakota, some reaching Kansas,
(09:24):
and we were constantly busy. Wewere the ones going into the
school. We were the ones talkingto youth in the schools, talking
about the importance ofunderstanding what human
trafficking is and social mediasafety. Now here's the thing
that we did a littledifferently. I told you that all
(09:46):
of that curriculum that I found,and there wasn't a lot, but the
curriculum I found was very fearbased. Now what we did was we
added a lot of engagement, a lotof activities, and, yes, a lot
of. Humor. And we always havesaid we take our topic very
seriously. We don't takeourselves very seriously. And
(10:06):
what we did was come at it froma pedagogy standpoint, from an
education standpoint, and so wewanted our learners to respond
in a certain way. We wanted itto be about critical thinking,
not about us with a PowerPointand telling people what was
going on, but we really wantedour learners to respond in a way
(10:29):
that they retained. Studies haveshown that retention is better
when there is humor. And wewanted our students to want us
to come back. We didn't want tobe one and done. We wanted to
continue to come back. And so wewould go back every quarter,
(10:50):
every semester, every year,depending on the school. We did
that. But again, it was allabout critical thinking, that we
would ask questions and thenhave conversations surrounding
that. Now we did the same thingwith adults, and we started at
the time with, I said, middleschool and high school for
(11:11):
youth, and we started withparents and caregivers. We
expanded that over time. And sowith our youth curriculum, we
expanded that in 2015 from thirdgrade through 12th grade for
youth talking about humantrafficking, primarily sex
trafficking at that time,healthy relationships versus
(11:34):
unhealthy relationships andsocial media safety. So we had
three specific pieces that wewere talking to youth about and
then we expanded the humantrafficking piece of the
curriculum to adults, and so notjust parents and caregivers, but
school personnel. We added thefinancial system, we added
foster care, and so we startedadding to our pieces. Well, that
(11:56):
was going really well. We werebleeding money, I will tell you
that because we were the ones wehad brought in groups of
educators. We were the onesgoing into the schools. We were
traveling all over the place,and it was just a really
exciting time, but COVID hit,and
COVID really turned us inward,to really be introspective of
(12:21):
what do we need to do, what isgoing to work, what is not going
to work. Well, here's what wefound out very quickly as an in
person organization, really hardto be in person during COVID. I
think all of you know COVID kindof took a lot of people out.
Certainly a lot oforganizations, but we definitely
(12:45):
could not be in person withCOVID. And so we decided we're
going to go digital. We're goingto do what we can to go digital.
Well, when COVID subsided, westarted to go back like we had
been, but we realized schoolswere different, youth were
different. It was just adifferent world. And and I think
(13:07):
COVID created some reallypositive changes in our world.
In fact, the virtual aspect justblew up. And we can have people
working from home, and we havethe technology and the capacity
to do that, and that's awesome,but there were a lot of really
difficult things that happenedduring COVID as well. Teachers
started to leave in mass exodus.
Youth were coming backbehaviorally different, like
(13:32):
developmentally younger, andpart of that was because they
were at home. They weren'tgetting socialized, and there
were just a lot of changes, andwe saw it firsthand. It was then
that we really came to the factthat we need to expand to more
youth, and we're not going to beable to expand and reach more
(13:56):
youth by us going in in person.
And so it was at that time, andthat's the pivot, right? I think
that anybody who worked throughCOVID and made it past COVID had
to pivot. Everybody had topivot. And so that's what we
did. So we took a year off andjust really looked at our
(14:20):
curriculum. How do we createthis curriculum for
facilitators? How do we createthis curriculum for individuals
who want to use it, who serveyouth and get it out there? We
really were thinking at thetime, schools exclusively, not
exclusively, but that's whowould be, kind of our market.
(14:43):
And so we wrote it forfacilitators, and we created
this curriculum, kind of like atrain, the trainer, but it was
really intense training, the twoday intense training. But then
more than that, we. We're like,we're going to support these
people throughout the year, andthen they can recertify and we
(15:05):
can continue to support them.
Because what we didn't want todo is just hand over our
curriculum and say, good luck,because we know that's not
effective. We wanted to makesure that people knew how to
serve youth, how to educateyouth, because it is very
different. So that's what wedecided to do, and we kind of
changed up our youth curriculum,and then our adults, we were
training in person. Well, whathappened was that we found that
(15:29):
agencies were the ones who weretypically reaching out, that
there were some schools who wereinterested. But I think we all
know schools are swamped anddoing a ton of work and really
responsible for a lot. And so itwas agencies who came forward
and said, We want this. We wantthis curriculum for our
(15:51):
community. We want to go intothe schools. We want to do this.
And that's really where kind ofthe sweet spot was we started to
get the curriculum into hands ofagencies, especially people who
served youth and train them, andthey were facilitating, aha, but
one of our agencies said, No, wewant to serve the community. We
(16:16):
want to serve adults too. And sowe took all of our adult
curriculum and made it intofacilitation curriculum, and now
we have all of our curriculumthat we can train people on to
facilitate, from kindergartenthrough 12th grade for youth and
then adults of every facet ofthe community. So college age,
(16:39):
law enforcement, medical, coffeeshops, salons, school personnel,
all of that has stepped parents,community that stayed the same,
but adding the financialinstitute, hospitality and all
of those things, well, then wewent a step further, and we
created online courses. We'vecreated an online course for
(17:02):
individuals, just kind ofgeneric industry, or generic
this is what you need to know,and that can be found on our
website for purchase at a veryreasonable price. And and then
we created for corporations sohospitality to use for
onboarding, and we're continuingto create those, but now we are
(17:23):
in the process of creating aparent and caregiver
specifically for how do you talkto your youth about human
trafficking? How do you talk toyour youth about social media
safety? And we're writing a bookon that. Now, what I didn't
mention is, during all of thistime when we started to get our
(17:43):
curriculum out there andactually get our curriculum in
the hands of agencies andschools and things like that, we
we went national. It was reallyexciting to see what happened.
We started getting requests fromall over the nation, and we have
now expanded into almost 10states now, and we're continuing
(18:06):
to do that amazing work. What'sreally cool about the
curriculum, and I will tell you,we have an incredible director
of programming, RebeccaSaunders, who you will meet
because she will be on thispodcast. And we have an amazing
director of operations, EricaZettel, who you will also meet,
because she will be on thispodcast, but we have 30 plus
(18:28):
pieces of curriculum now, whichis unbelievable to me when we
started over, you know, aholiday break writing curriculum
for middle schoolers and highschoolers one piece and one for
parents and caregivers. It'sastounding to see how this has
grown. So that's kind of what'shappening with the set me free
(18:51):
project. It has been a reallyexciting time. It's been an
exciting time to see thedirection we're moving. And, you
know, people always ask one ofthe questions I get is, where do
you get your funding? Well, Iwould say the majority of our
funding comes from privategrants and individual donors. We
do have income through ourcurriculum, which is great. I
(19:15):
think every single nonprofitshould have an income base
somewhere, and so that issomething that we do. But then
we also have a couple of federalgrants. And in fact, we do have
a federal grant through the CDCthat will make our curriculum,
ultimately, when we're done, oneof the first rigorously reviewed
(19:35):
or evidence based youthcurriculum on human trafficking
in the nation, which is veryexciting. So it has been an
exciting journey. I think aboutthe early times when it was just
Cindy and me, you know, me goinginto a school, and Cindy doing
the finances behind the scenes.
(19:58):
And, you know, of course, at.
First it was really easy for herto do finances, because even I
know zero plus zero, it equalszero. So it's just been an
exciting journey. But we aregoing to be podcasting for you,
and kind of for us, because Ilike it. I think it's super fun
to do and have theseconversations, and a lot of them
(20:20):
are conversations we haveanyway, so why not have them
with you as a part of it? Sotrying to think, if there is
anything else I want to sharewith you outside of the exciting
stuff of the podcast, so youwill still be able to listen to
all of the past, resilience inlife and leadership. Those will
(20:43):
be available, but we'll have anew look. It will be on the set
me free project website, andjust some new topics and new
people and conversations. Soreally excited with what we're
going to be doing. I think I'vesaid that quite a few times, but
let us know. Follow our socials.
(21:06):
Follow us on socials. We areliterally, I think, on the
majority of them, Facebook,Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok,
YouTube. Follow us on oursocials. Share them. Please give
us reviews, five stars, please.
If you don't like it, just letus know. Anyway, we are really
excited. Yeah, I think I've saidthat 15 times. So we are ready
(21:30):
to go enjoy R and R resilienceand relationships where, okay, I
got to get the tag here, realtalk for real life, and you will
get me, but also the set me freeproject team. All of those
people are much, much smarterthan I am, and I am really
(21:54):
excited to share them with you.
Let us know what you want tohear, please, and we can't wait
to talk to you more. I have tothink of a cool tagline to end
with. Yeah, real talk, reallife. Keep talking,
(22:15):
keep real, keep living life.
I'll work on that. So thank youfor listening. Cannot wait to
see you again. Oh, and before Iforget, our goal is to have
these out every month, once amonth, and I don't know well,
we'll work on like a day, but wemay have them more often. We'll
(22:38):
see but thank you for listening.
We can't wait to see you nexttime, and I appreciate it. Get
some R and R. Maybe that's ourtagline. Get some R and R, I
don't know. Let me know what youthink. Bye. You
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