Pastor Gwendolyn Cook was a preacher before she became a fierce advocate for young women swept into sex trafficking. As a preacher she had the unique position of supporting her congregants in their lowest moments, including while they are in prison. The individuals that stood out to Pastor Cook the most were young girls.
Pastor Cook serves the Camden, NJ, and she is the newest member of EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network. She serves a special role on the network because she has many years of experience helping youth. Her gift for accessing the needs of young people made her uniquely positioned for helping young girls.
Most of the youth she served were survivors of sexual assault and sex trafficking. After visiting almost 50 girls over a number of visits in a female juvenile prison, she says, “I couldn’t believe there were so manly little girls in that situation.” On the ride home, she couldn’t stop crying from the weight of all the girls she had just seen. Even through her tears, Pastor Cook thought, “How can I help them?”
She started mentoring girls in a local juvenile facility in 2009. Her advocacy then began to expand when she realized that children all over New Jersey needed help.
Pastor Cook recognized the risk from increased gang activity, drug distribution, and overall crime and knew that she needed to pray for the youth and find a way to support them. The need became even more apparent when the violence reached her own family. Her niece was swept up into sex trafficking.
Pastor Cook’s solution was to create an organization that acted as a crisis unit. Women Walking in the Spirit (WWITS) Girls Mentoring Program isn’t a 9 to 5 organization,” Pastor Cook said. “Crime doesn’t happen that way.” And she’s right — especially in Camden, a city well-known for its poverty and struggles with violence. The city’s need for trauma-informed care is essential.
WWITS gets refers from courts, police, and schools, and community members for girls that might be at risk of being involved in the justice system.
The organization’s goal is to try and connect with the girls before they become victims. One of the ways Pastor Cook does is by “mentoring the whole family.” Sexual violence can be a generational trauma, and in order to help the girls, the whole family has to receive support.
Her relationship with EJUSA first started when we worked together to frame a narrative for WWITS’s work and build a program model so they could gain new funding sources.
In the future, Pastor Cook wants to build an art institution. She believes kids are put into environments, like the gray blank walks of public-school classrooms, that subconsciously prepare them to be in prison. Instead, kids should be in an environment that urges them to be creative and free.
She first collaborated with EJUSA to help build the framework for her organization and find resources for funding. And so far she’s benefited from learning about applying for grants and working with Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice. Working with EJUSA has expanded beyond anything she could have possibly thought she could do for the children of her community.
