The History of the SA Foundation
The SA Vision began in 1989 when the SA founder started a program in Alberta, Canada, including three front-line houses, a day treatment program, pre-employment training, childcare and long-term affordable housing. The SA founder and team, considering the Calgary pilot project’s next step of growth, founded the SA Foundation (Servants Anonymous) – Canada in Calgary, Alberta, in 1995, for the sole purpose of fundraising on the pilot project’s behalf and for developing related business ventures.
These business ventures not only provide on-the-job shadowing and training to participants, but also set the tone for the Calgary pilot project and any other SA programs birthed out of this model to envision and plan for long-term financial sustainability. In addition, transitional housing was developed to support the transition between front-line and long-term affordable housing.
Once completely established, this program gained national attention due to its tremendous success with this population. The entire program is structured to provide care and services for up to seven years – exactly the long-term approach that is needed to heal young women that are so terribly damaged.
This pilot program became the SA Foundation’s program model for developed countries.
In the year 1998, the SA Foundation began to be increasingly approached by leaders in other communities that wished to implement this recovery model in their own cities. In response to this need the Foundation branched out and started its World Services Division that undertook the writing of the SA program model into training documents and set about screening and training new leadership.
A second pilot program was begun in the year 2001 in Kathmandu, Nepal to not only provide services to youth and women that are sexually exploited (or any at risk of being exploited), but to also include a focus on trafficking.
This pilot program became the basis for the SA Foundation’s program model for developing countries and includes:
- Awareness raising
- Informal education classes
- Income generation programs such as kitchen gardening, pig/cow/goat keeping and sewing for women in high risk communities
- Border monitoring
- Emergency shelters
- Short and long-term housing
- Recovery programs, and
- A fair trade initiative that produces handmade items by program participants to provide them with skill development and income to become self-supporting
Today, the SA Foundation continues to disseminate its program models, to train and mentor SA leaders and to fundraise to support the development of SA organizations.
This feature is Part 2 of a two-part series. Read Part 1 »