Rabbi Diana Gerson joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as the two discuss how faith-based communities can play a critical role in protecting children online and building a network of trusted community leaders.

Rabbi Diana Gerson

Rabbi Diana Gerson is the Associate Executive Vice President of the New York Board of Rabbis. She represents the organization at the United Nations and leads interfaith initiatives focused on child welfare, community resilience, and violence prevention. She is a member of the Child Dignity in a Digital World initiative and serves as Senior Advisor for Partnerships and External Relationships at the Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities. She co-founded the Global Advocacy Hub for Children and Families and is the USA Country Coordinator for the Global Network of Religions for Children. In 2024, she was appointed to the UNHCR Multi-Religious Council of Leaders.

Key Points

• Faith-based communities play a crucial but often overlooked role in child protection. Religious institutions, such as houses of worship and community centers, function as youth-serving organizations and must take responsibility for safeguarding children.
• Digital literacy is a fundamental skill for both children and adults. Many older generations struggle with technology, yet children are highly adept at navigating digital spaces, often without understanding the risks.
• Free apps are not truly free—when users don’t pay with money, they pay with their personal data. Parents and faith leaders must educate themselves on the risks of digital platforms and the terms and conditions that affect privacy and safety.
• Child protection policies in faith-based institutions should match those of public schools, including background checks, training, and accountability measures for both staff and volunteers.
• There is no single “safe” place for children—every organization must have observable and interruptible spaces to ensure child safety. Parents must take an active role in monitoring these environments.
• Online exploitation is a growing crisis, fueled by the ease of image sharing on digital platforms. Faith-based organizations must recognize their responsibility in digital safety education and safeguarding measures.
• Many faith-based organizations lack proper protocols for reporting abuse. Instead of conducting internal investigations first, they must follow legal reporting requirements and ensure transparency.
• Faith leaders can be powerful advocates for online safety and child protection by integrating these issues into sermons and community discussions. These conversations should not be relegated to separate, optional trainings but rather be normalized as part of faith-based teaching.
• Partnering with faith-based organizations in digital literacy efforts is essential. Trainings should start with executive-level leaders and then expand to parents, staff, and youth members.
• Involving trusted religious leaders in digital safety initiatives can help overcome parental resistance. When faith leaders co-facilitate trainings, parents are more likely to trust and engage with the material.
• Normalizing discussions about technology and online risks is as crucial as past societal shifts in addressing domestic violence, child abuse, and public health issues like cancer. Faith leaders must lead by example in these conversations.
• Young people must be seen as part of the solution, not just future stakeholders. Engaging them in leadership roles and advocacy efforts empowers them to protect themselves and their peers.

Resources

• LinkedIn – Rabbi Diana Gerson
• Instagram – Rabbi Diana Gerson

Transcript

[00:00:00] Sandie: Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice right here in Orange County, California. This is episode number 340, Building a Network of Trusted Community Leaders with Rabbi Diana Gerson. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan,

[00:00:23] and this is a show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice and make a difference in ending human trafficking. I am so delighted to have Rabbi Diana Gerson with me today. She is the Associate Executive Vice President of the New York Board of Rabbis. But she is so much more,

[00:00:49] she represents the organization at the United Nations and leads interfaith initiatives focused on child welfare, community resilience, and violence prevention. I want to just list, the organizations that she is involved as members or serving on in some way. Just to highlight the value of that connectedness and overlapping networks, She’s a member of the Child Dignity In a digital world. She was appointed senior advisor for partnerships and external relationships at the interfaith Alliance for safer communities. She co founded the global advocacy hub for children and families. And she’s the USA country coordinator for the global network of religions for children. She was also appointed in 2024 to the UNHCR multi religious council of leaders. Wow, that is a mouthful, I had to take several breaths. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast, Diana.

[00:02:08] Diana: Thank you, Sandie, so much for having me. It is wonderful to be back.

[00:02:12] Sandie: That’s right. That’s right. You’ve been on here before and I imagine we will find time to do this again. you’re going to be at Ensure Justice this year and the aspect of how we keep our kids safe online in a brand new digital world, there is a role for faith based communities to play that we often don’t talk about.

[00:02:38] We talk about parents need to do this, schools need to do that. So tell us how the faith based community can join.

[00:02:47] Diana: It’s an amazing thing that happens when we talk about children, because children intersect. And pull together all the threads of community. Children go to school, children are at home, children have networks of friends, they belong to the Girl Scouts, they go to, Cub Scouts, and they’re in Little League, and soccer, and art, and dance.

[00:03:08] But they’re also essential members of our faith communities. In fact, if we think about it for a second, faith communities and religious institutions, faith institutions, whether they’re houses of worship, community centers, the YMCA, the JCC, etc, they are all youth serving organizations. We don’t often frame it that way.

[00:03:30] We don’t think about it in those terms, but they are. And every single faith based institution has computers. We have computers, we have Wi Fi, we have digital footprints, we have access to educational opportunities, we intersect online all the time, with those institutions. So we have a really important role in the safeguarding of children and being a resource in actually building global citizenship and digital literacy.

[00:04:05] If we’re not part of the conversation, we’re part of the problem.

[00:04:09] Sandie: Okay. So. Let’s sit for a minute in what digital literacy actually means, because I’m pretty sure there are communities of folks my age, the grandmas and the grandpas, who feel totally out of sync and unable to engage with their grandkids, because digital literacy is such a looming mountain to climb.

[00:04:37] Diana: Oh my goodness. What does it even mean to be digitally literate? I, I meet people all the time and they’re like, I’m really good on my desktop computer, but I can’t quite figure out my iPad. I’m really good on my phone, but it doesn’t really coordinate with my laptop. And what I have found is if I ask a seven year old, they can tell me how to figure all of it out.

[00:04:59] Children today don’t see the world in that way. So understanding a few basic things about your, your device, right? Digital literacy means understanding the device  itself. This is a supercomputer. The cell phone today is no longer a telephone that’s attached to the wall in the house.

[00:05:16] It’s no longer a place where it’s a conversation just between two people. This is a supercomputer that connects you to anything in the world. It is the most extraordinary gift we have given to our children. And it is the greatest threat that we have put in their very hands. We have such a responsibility to understand the device and the programs that The child is using and who they are communicating with through that device every single day.

[00:05:47] We see these apps. And I remember once talking to a parent, Oh, my child can download anything that’s free.

[00:05:54] Sandie: Oh,

[00:05:55] Diana: I’m like, Nothing is free. So what does that exactly mean? So the parent is saying, Oh, my child could buy anything that, you know, download anything out of the app store so long as it doesn’t cost me, the parent, anything.

[00:06:09] And I’m like, you do understand that if you’re not paying for something, you, the user, you are the commodity. They are buying and selling your information. Now, you go and you download an app. We’ve all done it. We download an app. Now what? Terms and conditions. How many of us have read all the terms and conditions, and I, I dare anybody to read them out loud.

[00:06:33] It’s like watching paint dry.

[00:06:36] Sandie: hmm.

[00:06:36] Diana: It’s a lot of legalese, and we have absolutely no idea what is embedded in there. I’ll give you a small example. Bitmoji. Bitmoji, you go into the terms and conditions, you click yes, okay, you didn’t pay much attention. But if you actually use Bitmoji, and go directly from the app, into your text messages, and send it, Bitmoji now owns all of your text.

[00:07:00] Yes, indeed, that they now have access to all the information on your device. So think about it, the terms and conditions are actually quite important to understand how your information is being used.

[00:07:14] Sandie: Hmm.

[00:07:15] Diana: This is part of digital literacy. We have to understand what’s inside the actual applications, because that’s what they are, they’re applications, the websites we are accessing, how our information is being used, misused, safeguarded, or not.

[00:07:33] So we have to look at all of those aspects when we’re looking at anything that’s on one of these devices. Whether it’s our cell phones, whether it’s the iPad, the laptop, you name it, anything that connects to the internet today is a potential threat. Through the internet, we give our children access to the world.

[00:07:53] We saw during COVID kids could go online, they could do their education, they could take a digital virtual trip. and explore the world, history, culture, music, art, nature. However, we’re also giving the world access to our children. And we have to be conscious of that because we have no idea who’s on the other end of that conversation.

[00:08:16] Sandie: Okay. So, when we started, and you ran through a list of youth facing, faith based organizations, names that are household names for me, I’ve been focused here at the Global Center on educating parents and working with schools and teachers. But when I talk to parents, I realize they feel a sense of safety if they drop their kids off at their, faith based organizations, youth activities.

[00:08:54] It’s so much safer, or there’s just this sense that, I don’t need to worry right now, even to the point of, maybe even oversimplifying this, but sending them to a faith based school because it will be safer. And so I’m curious how, how we can hold those. organizations to the same level of accountability that we do, for instance, to our public schools.

[00:09:26] Diana: Well, they should be following the same rules and regulations, that’s to start. And that means when they’re doing hiring, they should be doing background checks, including the registry for,for child abuse. We should be checking references. We should be training them. And then we need to monitor.

[00:09:47] So that’s from the start. That’s who they employ. It should also carry over to who volunteers. Not every person is a safe person. Not everybody who’s ever perpetrated has been caught, held accountable. They’re not on a registry.

[00:10:03] Sandie: Mm.

[00:10:04] Diana: we have to be mindful of where we leave our children and to understand that there is no one place that is going to 100 percent be a safe place.

[00:10:13] And I don’t say that to create a sense of panic, but a sense of ownership, that I have a responsibility in these spaces as well. That all the spaces where children are should be observable and interruptible. Everything should be out in the open, their child protection policies. Just like the school, the public school, it should be online, it should be visible, that we know that every one of our institutions where a child will be is a safer place.

[00:10:45] We’re mindful of our responsibility. So we have those policies, the training, it’s all available for people to understand, to see, and we welcome parents to participate in those trainings as well. I think it’s really, really important to think. even in those spaces that they’re following the same rules and regulations.

[00:11:06] I’ll give you an example. There was a JCC camp, summer day camp. Oh, the JCC is the Jewish community center.

[00:11:16] Sandie: Oh, okay.

[00:11:17] Diana: It’s like going to the YMCA. It’s exactly the same thing. It’s a community center. It’s faith based. You get kids from every religious background. It’s like the summer camp in the neighborhood. And everybody, whether they’re Jewish, not Jewish, they take their kids there.

[00:11:32] And there’s a JCC and they, this is in the days, gosh, late nineties.

[00:11:39] Sandie: Mm.

[00:11:40] Diana: And there’s a situation where, you know, the counselors are there, they’ve been hired. There’s hasn’t been a lot of, background checks and other things that we’re supposed to be doing to by today’s standard nineties was a different time and place.

[00:11:53] So thinking roughly 25, 30 years ago. And what they find later on after the summer is over that one of the summer camp counselors had been taking images, pictures of boys changing after swim in the locker room.

[00:12:12] Sandie: Mm.

[00:12:13] Diana: and has sold those pictures to a website.

[00:12:17] Sandie: Mm.

[00:12:18] Diana: So here we have CSAM, child sexual abuse material that has been taken, by an adult.

[00:12:26] In a youth serving faith based organization that has now been sold and posted online. So now we have online sexual exploitation, in its very early stages of that online space. Once upon a time, these images were taken and shared as digital files, or printed files, and they were traded in a lot of ways, dare I say, and it kind of gives me, makes my hair on the back of my neck stand up to say it, but traded like baseball cards.

[00:13:00] Sandie: Yeah.

[00:13:01] Diana: Today, these things are flying across the internet, so quickly that it’s hard to believe that, how we can even get it back? How can we contain it? How many images are being, traded online? How many are uploaded daily? How many are uploaded yearly? How many reports go to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to the cyber tip line every single year?

[00:13:28] Sandie: Oh, and the report that came out, a year ago showed a 300 percent increase in two years.

[00:13:35] Diana: Uh huh, and really so much of that increase was fueled initially by the pandemic, because everything was happening at online and no one was watching.

[00:13:45] Sandie: so when we’re talking about equipping faith leaders as part of our network, holding them to the same levels of accountability seems to be an important policy for a community to adhere to.

[00:14:02] Diana: Absolutely. You need to be holding them accountable in the same way that the policy should be the same. The procedures for hiring, volunteers, training, monitoring, and reporting.

[00:14:17] Sandie: Mm.

[00:14:19] Diana: There is an instinct in most communities, you see this in even the public schools that the institution kind of closes around.

[00:14:24] We’re going to do our own investigation and you go state by state. You can see what the rules and regulations are, but generally speaking, you’re not supposed to be doing your own internal investigation before you report out. That’s not a good practice. And in most cases, it’s It’s not the policy, it’s not the regulation, and it’s not the law.

[00:14:44] So we actually have to be thinking about how we adhere as we not only want to be part of policy makers and change makers, but actually we then have to follow those rules too. It’s not just good for them, it’s good for us. And we need to lead by our example.

[00:15:01] Sandie: Oh I like that.

[00:15:02] Diana: we want to make our, we need to make our houses of worship and our faith spaces the safest places.

[00:15:08] We have to do everything we can do so that every adult is empowered to protect a child.

[00:15:15] Sandie: So let’s, let’s move over to the other side of this equation and see some of the incredible opportunity for those youth facing faith based centers and works. Because what I’ve experienced when I talk to parents and our students here at Vanguard are live to free peer educators go into the public schools, but parents sometimes say, well, I don’t want my children to get all of that content. I want to do it at my church, at my synagogue, at my temple this is, this is going to be safer to assure that the content is what I as the parent prefer. So when we want to do community outreach with young people and faith based, how do we equip those faith based youth facing, centers?

[00:16:21] How do we actually help them use the best possible digital literacy training, teaching kids to resist grooming, all of those kinds of issues so that we can, we can break through the resistance of the parents on behalf of those children.

[00:16:43] Diana: I think when we talk about partnering, and it really is about partnership, it’s partnering with our faith based institutions. So if it’s going to the YMCA, it’s going to the local church, it’s going to, the faith based youth organization, we start by offering a training to their staff, executive level.

[00:17:04] Let’s get them trained. Let’s have them buy in to the work, the mission and the urgency, because this isn’t a problem that’s going to be a problem in 10 years from now. This is a problem that’s going to be with us for the next. I can’t tell you how many years and it’s only going to exponentially get worse.

[00:17:24] One image of a child is going to be shared hundreds of thousands of times over the course of infinite years.

[00:17:32] Sandie: Hmm.

[00:17:32] Diana: Taking down a photo off, off the internet is near impossible. So we want to get in front of that, right? We want to, we want to change the trajectory for these children. We want to make sure that no one’s grooming them and taking photos.

[00:17:46] And we certainly don’t want them self generating these materials either, which is an increasingly large problem. It just, the numbers are staggering. It’s up over 25 percent amongst, you know, boys in a small age bracket. This is Every year I’m reading, it’s only, it’s up by this much, it’s up by this much, it’s 20 percent here, it’s 50 percent there, it’s 100 percent there, the numbers never cease to amaze and terrify me at the same time.

[00:18:15] so we want to get ahead of that, we want to change the narrative. So offering programs at the executive level, getting faith leaders in particular, who are tremendous advocates on these, in these spaces. So if you have a rabbi, a minister, a priest, an imam, a sheikh, somebody of faith, who’s respected in the community, who’s willing to come with you in helping to open that door and then asking, once you do an initial training and say, we’d like to bring this training to your community.

[00:18:47] Whether it’s to the parents or the rest of the staff and volunteers or to the children directly that you offer to actually, once you’ve worked with the religious leader, whatever their title is, invite them to co teach with you.

[00:19:05] Sandie: Hmm.

[00:19:06] Diana: I often do this. I offer stewards of children, which is, developed by darkness to light.

[00:19:12] I was Charleston, South Carolina, and I’ve been training. I’ve been an authorized facilitator doing this since 2007. And I have trained hundreds of churches and synagogues and mosques. And for anyone who’s ever been resistant, the first thing I say is, come teach with me. I look at the minister, the priest, the imam, come co facilitate with me.

[00:19:34] I want you to help put the religious framework around this. This topic is hard. We need faith as part of this conversation. It’s what helps build resilience. So we need to have that to help bring us comfort in very uncomfortable conversations, and also helps to give us a moral pathway. So if I invite them to be part of the conversation, we work together to develop how we’re going to do this.

[00:20:02] And then we co facilitate. Then we create opportunity. Now, the parent is going to be comfortable who said, I’m not doing that in the public school setting, but my minister’s involved. Oh, okay. Now this is different. Now this speaks to my moral obligation. It speaks to my faith and my faith in action.

[00:20:23] So, I think that’s really where we, we really use our relationships to really build the matrix that we need that safety net under our kids.

[00:20:35] Sandie: I just feel like we’re done. That’s what we needed to communicate, but we’re going to keep going anyway, so this idea of having a trusted faith leader as part of the outreach and the training, the equipping and digital literacy, all of that. Can you give me some examples of how that’s been successful, how I might approach it right here.

[00:21:05] I, you know, it’s been a while since I’ve been had lunch with the local Imam. I did several years ago, but I know that those kids are often not part of the community trainings that are then restricted because of faith practices. I talked to the leaders in that community and they want their kids to have this kind of resilience training. And so it is, for me, this is a super important conversation, and I loved how you framed this as a moral pathway. Instead of becoming oppositional and saying, well, they don’t want this, or they are this, or I’m not, I want to find out how to do this better. So I’ve already taken a few notes. I’m going to intentionally look for ways to co facilitate. What could, parents do when you’re all in the same, maybe soccer team or whatever, and you see that there are kids who have not had digital literacy training to resist grooming? What are some steps along that pathway?

[00:22:28] Diana: Part of it starts with conversation, right? We need to be talking about it. We need to be talking about it all the time. When I talk to faith leaders in particular, I will tell them, you need to get up on the pulpit. I, I don’t care which day of the week you pray, you know, when, the day when your community is together is that’s the day you should be talking about these issues.

[00:22:49] Sandie: not in a separate classroom for just those people that are interested. Oh my gosh, that makes me crazy. No, okay,

[00:22:57] go ahead, call them to the front.

[00:22:59] Diana: call them to the front, but what I always remember, when I started my work almost 25 years ago, I, I remember I would get to a synagogue and they put on the billboard outside, like, Domestic Violence Shabbat. And I was the keynote speaker. So I was the, I was the, giving the sermon that night and it’s domestic violence Shabbat.

[00:23:20] There is no faster way to make sure nobody shows up to Shabbat

[00:23:22] Sandie: Ha, ha, ha, ha, oh

[00:23:25] Diana: So what I started to do back in the day was I focused on once a month, once a month was family Shabbat, family Shabbat was like kids and I would do a story and I would integrate some of these lessons into, Family Shabbat into the storytelling about what we do and what we don’t do, how we navigate difficult conversations, difficult places, and one of the interesting things is that children do a really great job, you know, interpersonal communication because that uh oh feeling,

[00:23:57] you know, kind of like perks up and it still works as adults like that uh oh feeling.

[00:24:01] It’s like, that person doesn’t make me feel comfortable, doesn’t make me feel safe. I’m going to go in this other direction, but we don’t get that feeling online. So that, it’s a, it’s a teaching kids how to do this. So if we could put it into storytelling, then we start to build a framework. But then at least once a month, the, the teachings of our sacred texts, our scriptures, whatever scripture text your faith uses, has stories about vulnerability

[00:24:32] Sandie: mm,

[00:24:33] Diana: and human frailty and things we’ve done really great and moments we really missed the mark.

[00:24:39] There’s stories about humanity. It’s about raising us up and challenging us to do better. So I would take those stories once a month and talk about, pick one, and talk, and frame that conversation in, you know, on that holy day to talk about the issues. People knew that I was going to be talking about issues one, you know, one Shabbat a month.

[00:25:03] That’s what I talked about. I had the most number of people coming to synagogue, and that’s what I did. And I challenge us to do that, that we need to pick the tough topics, and we need to talk about them, not once, not twice, but often, to the point that everybody at the supermarket, when they say, do you know somebody who you could talk to about X, Y, and Z, they go, oh, go talk to Rabbi Diana,

[00:25:26] Sandie: ah, that’s so good.

[00:25:27] Diana: right?

[00:25:28] They, they, it doesn’t matter if they’re from your community or not.

[00:25:32] Sandie: Okay, so you are inspiring me so much because I have been online. I’ve listened to at least 100 podcasts and I’m not exaggerating about the incredible value and absolute necessity of talking to your kids about technology regularly. One, one group at Screenagers, they have Tech Talk Tuesday and just so much of that, but from the, uh, let’s take a 30, 000 foot perspective and our faith families also need to talk tech and whether that’s Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, or Sunday, we have to normalize that it’s okay to talk tech and to talk about the risks for sexual exploitation. And that means modeling it, and I really believe that interfaith leaders are trusted thought leaders that can model that in their position of authority and influence.

[00:26:45] I don’t even know where else to go with that, but I just, if you, as a listener, are thinking, Oh, this is kind of a new way. I’m going to have to go talk to my rabbi, my mom, my pastor, my priest, go and have that conversation and start to crack through the tradition that doesn’t include that kind of conversation because our kids are important and we need to normalize the family coming together and talking about the risks.

[00:27:26] Diana: I couldn’t agree more. And I do remember back, if you can think back through the course of life, in your lifetime, in my lifetime, there was once upon a time we used to sit around the table and everybody would whisper the, about the things that we didn’t talk about in polite company. You know, somebody’s got cancer, there’s, somebody got a divorce, somebody has, there was domestic violence, there was child, all these things, it’s like we, we would whisper at the table because it was as if we said it out loud, something bad would happen.

[00:27:58] And over the decades. These things have been normalized, right? We, we talk about cancer, talking about cancer. My goodness, men are wearing mustaches in November. Women are out and wearing pink in October. Like we couldn’t be talking about it more. And it’s a community that rallies around and has changed the trajectory,

[00:28:19] right?

[00:28:19] The, how we treat. treat cancer, prevent cancer, how we work together as a community to support one another. divorce. Divorce was something everybody whispered about. Now 52%, I think it is, of Americans are divorced, right? And so talking about divorce has become very normalized in our communities.

[00:28:39] We started talking about child abuse. Child abuse became illegal in all 50 states. Domestic violence became illegal in all 50 states. All these things took time, and all of these things took time for us to normalize in conversation.

[00:28:56] Sandie: Hmm.

[00:28:57] Diana: Technology and its risks are the same. We need to start to normalize the conversation.

[00:29:04] That it’s not something that, oh, we have to talk about in the back room at the congregation when, when no one else is listening. Look, we’ve had policies in, that have been required of us for a really long time. Since the 80s and 90s, we all have liability insurance in our congregations and our youth serving organizations.

[00:29:22] They all mandate molestation insurance. Those require certain policies, protocols, and training. We now need to live up to those standards and we have to talk about it.

[00:29:34] Sandie: Hmm. Wow. Okay. How do people connect with you and which way should they connect? I’m looking at, Child Dignity Alliance, Partnerships, Hub for Children, UNHCR, GNRC. Tell us, how do we connect?

[00:29:54] Diana: The easiest way to find me, LinkedIn and of course, Instagram, I Instagram @RabbiDiana. So it’s not hard to figure out R A B B I D I A N A. I certainly work with my partners all over the globe. Uh, GNRC today is in over 80 countries and regions around the world. The Global Network of Religions for Children.

[00:30:17] We were just together in Abu Dhabi in November for our sixth global forum. and we had 52 teenagers from 30 countries. Who are participating and it was one of the most incredible fixed days with these young people that inspired and uplifted me to the point that I know we’re going to be okay because these young people, they held our adult feet to the fire.

[00:30:42] It was faith leaders from around the globe, senior, you know, religious leaders, government leaders, civil society partners. And they were like, but you’re not doing enough for us. And I was so blown away by their, by their challenge, by their spirit, by their energy, by their focus and by their candor.

[00:31:03] These children are not afraid to speak their mind.

[00:31:06] Now they were chosen to be there by, by their country, uh, committees. So obviously they were there with purpose. But they came prepared, and they really saw their role as not just the generation of the future, but the generation of now. We have to stop thinking about our children as just, oh, their future, their future, their future.

[00:31:30] No, no, no. It’s right now.

[00:31:32] Sandie: They’re walking on that road.

[00:31:34] Diana: They are on that road, and we want them to have a childhood.

[00:31:39] Sandie: Hmm.

[00:31:39] Diana: We want to safeguard that childhood. But to do that, we have to empower them and their parents. Their community around them because a child’s not necessarily going to tell you their own parent or their own teacher they may tell somebody else’s pastor when they’re sitting there at the end of services because they went to somebody’s you know, somebody’s whether it was confirmation or some other event all of a sudden they may disclose something that they may be discovered

[00:32:08] Sandie: Hmm.

[00:32:09] Diana: And so we have to be there for each other across faith.

[00:32:14] And that’s why I think this is so important is that faith leaders who learn together, grow together, we see each other as our partners. So if the Global Center for Women and Justice started with a advisory council of faith leaders and brought together all the faith leaders from all the different communities, then it’s an incredible opportunity.

[00:32:39] And I think that’s, that’s, that’s the pathway. I used to say that all the time. You know, local communities, they had a, they have the Crime Victims Board, they have this board, they have this organization, this district attorney’s office has a domestic violence thing, child abuse thing. Where are your faith leaders?

[00:32:56] They shouldn’t be in a separate room.

[00:32:57] Sandie: No, no, because they have incredible influence because they are trusted leaders.

[00:33:05] Diana, I can hardly wait for you to be out here in person for Ensure Justice. And I’m looking forward to some of those really great conversations in person. So thank you for being with me today.

[00:33:21] Diana: I cannot thank you enough for having me. This has always been my, one of my favorite conversations is any conversation with you,

[00:33:29] Sandie: Oh, and the same to you. For our listeners, we’re inviting you to take the next step and go over to endinghumantrafficking.org and find the resources Diana and I have been talking about. And if you haven’t visited our site before, take some time and become a subscriber to receive a newsletter with the show notes and whenever a new episode drops.

[00:33:54] And if you’re already a listener, write a review so other people can find us, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and even Facebook. So I’ll see you back here in two weeks.