Cedar Refuge

September Newsletter is going out at 10 AM tomorrow!! 📬🌲

Not subscribed yet? You can join our email list by visiting our website linked in our profile. ❤️

🌲 If you’re new here, we are Cedar Refuge, a nonprofit building a safe haven for children healing from s*x trafficking in America.

Follow along as we bring this mission to life!

A little life update. ❤️

We’ve been kind of MIA this week, and we apologize!

This has been a hard week for the Gipe family. While we are doing really well overall and Cedar Refuge is coming along well, we received devastating news this week that one of Steven’s best friends passed away by apparent su***de.

In a nutshell, we are just gutted and heartbroken. We loved this friend tremendously, and life just won’t be the same. 💔

In the midst of that, we moved houses on Saturday, so our lives are currently in boxes, and we leave for a trip this upcoming Saturday. All that to say, life is just a little upside down at the moment!

Things are going really well, and we feel SO blessed to be in our new place, but we’re also holding the tension of really heavy hearts at the same time. Real life stuff, ya know. ❤️

P.S. HUGE shoutout to our local friends who literally rallied around us to help us move. We had 7 children running around while some parents supervised and others packed and moved boxes. 🥹 We felt so incredibly loved and blessed.

If you feel led, we could totally use the prayers right now. For comfort, peace, grace, and patience. We’ve genuinely felt the prayers this week, and we’re so thankful.

We’ll be back to normal programming soon. We appreciate you guys and your patience with us! ❤️

🌲 If you’re new here, we are Cedar Refuge. In the midst of real life, we’re building a safe haven for children who have experienced s*x trafficking in America.

Join us as we bring this mission to life.

And if you’re struggling right now, please know you are so loved. You matter to this world, and you would be so deeply missed. ❤️

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Su***de & Crisis Lifeline.

***depreventionmonth

You are loved. You are needed. And your story isn’t over. ❤️

If you’re struggling or in crisis, please reach out to someone. You don’t have to walk through it alone.

Call or text 988 to reach the Su***de & Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7. ❤️

Please stay. The world is better with you in it.

——
If you’re new here, we’re building a healing safe haven for children recovering from s*x trafficking in America. 🌲Follow along.

***depreventionmonth

When a child is recovered from s*x trafficking… where do they go?

That’s one of the challenges we continue to hear from people doing recovery work across the country: there simply aren’t enough appropriate places for children to go.

And getting a clear picture of just how big that gap is is surprisingly difficult.

There is currently no reliable national count of residential beds specifically dedicated to minors who have experienced commercial s*xual exploitation. But the studies we do have give us a glimpse:

• A 2013 national survey identified 33 residential programs with 682 beds for s*x trafficking victims. About 75% were designated for minors, roughly 512 beds. Fewer than 28 beds were identified for male victims.

• A 2019 survey identified 2,143 beds serving CSE/CSEC survivors, but only 37.4% were available to minors, roughly 801 beds. Fewer than 1% were exclusively for minor males.

And even those numbers include different levels of care, including emergency shelters, short-term housing, residential treatment, transitional housing, and long-term programs.

The numbers may be imperfect, but the message we continue to hear from the field is incredibly consistent:

We need more places for these kids to heal.

Recovery is only the beginning. Children need somewhere safe to go afterward, with people equipped to walk with them through complex trauma, substance use, education, stability, relationships, and long-term healing.

🌲 That is why we’re building Cedar Refuge.

Our vision is to create multiple small, family-like healing homes on one large property, providing individualized, specialized care for children recovering from s*x trafficking in America.

We want to help close this gap.

And if you want to be part of building more places for these kids to heal, follow along, share our mission, or visit the link in our bio. ❤️

Sources: OVC/BJA National Survey, 2013; Saint Francis Ministries, 2019.

Tonight we got to meet with some of our local anti-trafficking organizations here in the Redding area through TRACE Alliance! 🌲

We caught up on everyone’s latest updates and got to share a big piece of our Case for Support so far!

It’s not finished yet, but it was SO fun to finally present a piece of something we’ve been working incredibly hard on behind the scenes. 🥹 One step closer!

And on the personal side… the Gipe family moves into our new rental this weekend!! 📦🏡 After several years of some unique housing situations, we are VERY excited to be settling into a standard rental situation again. 😂❤️

Lots happening over here and more updates coming soon!

🌲 If you’re new here, we are Cedar Refuge, a nonprofit building a safe haven for children healing from s*x trafficking in America.

Follow along as we bring this mission to life! ❤️

GUYS!! We are SO excited to be working with Trey and his team at Ads by Friday to create a super solid promo video for our upcoming campaign launch! 🎥🌲

And with that… we are ALMOST READY to start presenting our Case for Support!! 🥹🙌

So here’s where YOU come in!

If you have a group of people you can gather who would be interested in hearing the vision for Cedar Refuge, please reach out to us! Churches, businesses, community groups, small gatherings, friends and family… we would love the opportunity to share what we’re building.

We can present in person or via Zoom, so you don’t have to be local!

🌲 If you’re new here, Cedar Refuge is building a safe haven for children healing from s*x trafficking in America.

We’re getting closer and closer to bringing this vision to life, and we would love for you to be part of it.

Let’s help kids heal from the trauma of s*x trafficking. ❤️

✨Steven in the living room wild✨

Working hard behind the scenes to get our Case for Support finished for our upcoming board meeting! 🌲

This has been a BIG project, but piece by piece, it’s coming together. We’re getting closer to putting the full vision for Cedar Refuge on paper and creating a place where children can find safety, healing, and hope.

If you’re new here, we are Cedar Refuge! A nonprofit building a safe haven in America for children healing from s*x trafficking.

Come along on this journey with us! ❤️

🏡 The Gipes are moving!!

If you’ve been following along for a while, you likely know that we (the Gipe family) have had a crazyyyyyy last few years.

A few years ago, we had to lay off our employees and close our furniture business, and essentially lost everything. We ended up buying an RV and living in it full time with our three dogs and then 1-year-old, Quinn.

It was a brutal season. Stress, sickness, unknown mold exposure in the RV, financial uncertainty, and a whole lot of figuring out what came next.

And strangely enough, it was right in the middle of that season that the vision for Cedar Refuge was planted in our hearts.

We remember thinking, “God, how can we possibly start something when our own lives are in disarray?!”

There was a LOT of praying and learning in that season.

We had been asking God to get us out of the RV, but we couldn’t see an end in sight.

Then Shiloh Flower Farm came out of nowhere. 🥹

The owners heard about us through the grapevine, we got connected, and they told us, “We have a loft, and we’re looking for caregivers for our farm that is going to become a nonprofit serving women coming out of homelessness.”

Within about a month, we were out of the RV and into the loft, right before winter hit. After RV life, this little three-bedroom loft genuinely felt like a CASTLE. 😂🥹

God is so good.

For almost two years, we’ve called Shiloh home. We’ve worked on the farm while quietly building Cedar Refuge behind the scenes. Then in April, we stepped into Cedar Refuge full time, and SO much has happened since.

And now another season is shifting. ❤️

*Continued in comments*

📬 Our last TWO newsletters are finally live on the blog!!

If you missed them in your inbox, you can now catch up on everything happening behind the scenes at Cedar Refuge right on our website. 🤎

🌲 If you’re new here, we are Cedar Refuge, and we’re building a farm-based safe haven for children recovering from s*x trafficking in America.

We’re documenting the journey from vision to open doors, and there’s a lot happening! Follow along as we bring Cedar Refuge to life.

Head to the link in our bio to catch up on the latest newsletters! ✨