John,

As summer approaches, we hope you’re excited for a new season. But before we all forge ahead, we wanted to mark a few milestones we have already reached this year!

This spring marked the one-year anniversary of The Polaris Resilience Fund and six months of cash assistance for the inaugural cohort. With these funds, survivors have been able to put food on the table, keep their lights on, get reliable transportation, and cover their children’s education.

And the benefits go beyond money. One participant shares:

“Ninety-five percent of my life is bad right now, and this five percent overpowers that and gives me hope. That’s why this program is so important because it energizes us to keep going. Like a rechargeable battery, I am powered up and can get back in there.”

The Resilience Fund is helping survivors stabilize their finances and encouraging them on their journeys toward thriving.

Alongside the Fund, Polaris is working to break down barriers to freedom, like the burden of carrying a criminal record due to trafficking. The Trafficking Survivors Relief Act has been introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, with 24 cosponsors and counting. We continue to educate Congressional staff (see Hotline Managing Director Megan Cutter in action below), and we are grateful for the 2,100+ of you who have sent letters to your Members of Congress!

Here are just a few other highlights from the last several months:

• The House of Representatives passed The Frederick Douglass Victims Protection & Prevention Reauthorization Act on February 13, supporting important resources for international anti-trafficking programs and the National Human Trafficking Hotline, among other provisions.

• Nonechka now reaches nearly 8,000 vulnerable migrant farmworkers across the U.S. and Mexico. We recently met with the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry, International Organization for Migration Guatemala, and other partners to promote this tool for use by Guatemalan workers on H-2A visas.

• We’ve shared our expertise with thousands of people through stakeholder and public engagement efforts, including a convening titled, “Dialogue on Decent Work in the Agricultural Sector in Mexico,” and collaborations with Delta Air Lines and The Man Enough Podcast.

We’re grateful to have you as part of our community, and we hope you’ll join us in celebrating these achievements. Thank you for partnering with us, for listening to survivors, and for walking alongside them on their journeys to freedom.