The Empowered Caregivers Project is a self-guided, interactive online toolkit designed to equip caregivers—both personal and professional—with knowledge, skills, and confidence to better support survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

This toolkit is for anyone who cares for, supports, or works alongside survivors of trafficking and sexual exploitation. That includes family members, mentors, program staff, community members, and service providers.

For the purpose of this resource, we define caregiver as an individual in a position to provide direct support, guidance, and advocacy for individuals at risk of or experiencing human trafficking or sexual exploitation.

You don’t need prior experience providing care or support to survivors to participate. However, this toolkit is not intended as an introduction to human trafficking. We encourage participants to have a basic understanding of what trafficking is and how it occurs before beginning the course.

The Empowered Caregivers Project was created to go beyond awareness and into action—it’s about applying foundational knowledge in real ways: in our relationships, in our caregiving, and in the everyday moments that shape a survivor’s healing. If you’re new to learning about human trafficking, we recommend exploring introductory resources first so you can get the most out of this deeper, relationship-focused course.

No, participation is currently free thanks to funding by Women and Gender Equality Canada provided to develop this resource.

The toolkit includes multiple modules and can be completed in approximately 4–6 hours in total depending on your learning style. You can go at your own pace and return to modules anytime.

Not at all. You can pause and return whenever you like—your progress will be saved.

Modules cover topics such as understanding the caregiver role, trauma-informed care, boundaries and self-care, collaboration, navigating the legal system, and supporting survivor well-being. Each module includes survivor-informed insights, reflection activities, and practical tools.

The Empowered Caregivers Project was developed with a trauma-informed lens. This means that we’ve intentionally avoided including unnecessarily graphic or explicit details. While some topics may still feel emotionally heavy, we encourage participants to move through the content at their own pace and take breaks as needed. Support and crisis resources are listed in the introductory modules of the course.

The Empowered Caregivers Project is unique because it was intentionally designed to fill a gap in existing resources. While awareness of human trafficking has grown across Canada, most materials focus on what trafficking is and how to recognize it. What has been less clear is how to best support survivors once a risk or experience of trafficking has been identified.

This toolkit goes beyond awareness—it is survivor-led as well as survivor-informed. Survivors were employed to lead the project from start to finish, guiding every stage from conceptualizing ideas to developing and delivering content. Their leadership ensures that the resource reflects the real priorities, insights, and expertise of people with lived experience.

We also carefully reviewed existing resources to identify gaps and intentionally designed this toolkit to support caregivers in practical, relationship-focused ways. While there may be other resources that address similar needs, offering a variety of tools in different formats helps strengthen awareness, understanding, and action across communities.

The Empowered Caregiver Action Plan is a personalized roadmap that participants build throughout the Empowered Caregiver Project course. Each module concludes with guided worksheets; these include activities like resource-finding exercises and other prompts to increase skills in emotional awareness, self-regulation, and empathy building. Together, these worksheets become your Empowered Caregiver Action Plan.

This process emphasizes that being an empowered caregiver requires intentional preparation — emotionally, practically, and relationally. Caregivers have a responsibility to ensure they’ve assembled the tools, supports, and information needed — based on their role and geographical location — so they can respond quickly and confidently when called upon.