Providing healing, hope, and freedom for survivors.

- one daughter at a time.

You can help free and care for the vulnerable.

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide women with a safe space for self-care and self-reflection to improve their lifestyles and to provide healing from gender-based violence. We serve several marginalized communities in Chicago where women have experienced trauma from dating and intimate partner violence and sexual abuse from family members and become vulnerable to recruitment in the illicit sex trade.

Our Services

Ernestine’s daughter takes a harm reduction and nonjudgmental approach so that people needing services feel compassionate care and support. Our staff, survivors of human trafficking, can better relate to women as they understand the recovery journey. Thus, Ernestine’s daughter can access the targeted population and encourage their entry into substance treatment.

We will serve the critical middle role of “warm hands-off” referrals after pregnant and postpartum women receive showers, food, clothing, and gentle encouragement to improve their and their child’s situation. Our organization is critical in finding clients seeking substance abuse treatment.

These clients may or may not be in the illicit sex trade, as the reputation of Ernestine’s daughter will allow widespread advertising throughout the poor, primarily racial minority neighborhoods of East Garfield Park. We can also be there at the check-in before appointments to provide the “warm hand-off” so that potential clients trust the substance abuse treatment staff and will be more likely to continue treatment.

About Us

Ernestine’s Daughter is a not-for-profit organization founded by Brenda Myers-Powell, the Chief Executive Officer, in 2023. Formerly, the outreach services for adult survivors of human trafficking were under the Dreamcatcher Foundation, a not-for-profit established in 2008, where Brenda Myers Powell was co-founder and Chief Operating Officer.

Our Founder

Brenda Myers Powell

During her fifteen years of outreach to victims in the illicit sex trade, Ms. Myers-Powell has established solid relationships with businesses, churches, nail and beauty shops, law enforcement, and those who are surviving in the illicit sex trade. She is an appointed member of the United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking and the underserved Populations Committee of this Council. She has been assisting women in the illicit sex trade with food and referral information through bi-weekly van outreaches to coax women into substance abuse and mental health treatment. She also has established a drop-in center in the East Garfield Park neighborhood that provides food, yoga, meditation, showers, referrals, and a place to rest. She has a reputation of meeting women where they are, and survivors, business owners, and law enforcement trust her and her outreach staff. Her outreach staff also has access to trap houses and other places where pregnant women and women with small children are located, as they are survivors who have been trained in outreach services.