BUFFALO, N.Y. — ​With its soft colors, inspirational messages, and serene atmosphere, Project Mona’s House has the feeling of an oasis. Founded in 2017, it is the only place of its kind in Buffalo where survivors of human trafficking can find restoration and themselves.

“If you are alive today, you have survived a 100% of your worst days,” Kelly Diane Galloway, founder of Project Mona’s House, said. “You have survived what you thought was going to take you out, what you thought was going to destroy you, and I think what Project Mona’s House works so hard to embody and to give people is hope.”

Giving hope and pride to survivors is at the core of Project Mona’s House, which now includes the FreeTHEM Center, a place for trafficking survivors and at-risk women and girls to receive counseling and other support. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because founder Kelly Diane Galloway led the FreeTHEM Walk this year, a journey along the Underground Railroad that sought to bring attention to this modern day form of slavery.

Remnants of the journey: reminders of everyone who contributed to the cause, including a supporter from Virginia who made this prayer journal for the walkers.

“She would journal here, and she would write all the FreeTHEM Walkers a message on Facebook every single day,” Galloway said. “So I would screenshot it and send it in our group chat and honestly, it was super encouraging. This is day 24 of prayer, because she started praying when we left Buffalo, which was May 1, but we didn’t start walking until May 3, so that’s why it’s day twenty-four of her prayer but day 22 of the walk.”

Continuing the mission, Project Mona’s House isn’t simply a shelter, it is a place of freedom. With a dedicated team of staff and volunteers, the center is proactive as opposed to reactive. Girls and young women are encouraged to reclaim their identities through skill building and creative outlets. Visitors to the center are made to know that that they are not what they may have gone through.

“The future is what’s going to keep them going when tough times happen because we know that tough times do happen; they don’t last, but tough people do,” Galloway said. “And so we focus on the future, we focus on what’s going to make them triumphant, what’s going to make them contributing and functioning members of society, and we harp on that, not what happened to them.”

The mission, now a movement, is outgrowing its space. There are plans for a Project Mona’s House Campus in 2022 that will house over 100 women who have been victimized by human trafficking, as well as their children. Now, everyone has a chance to be part of the change through the “Buy a Bed’ campaign.

“We still need the community to help volunteer and be really active at Project Mona’s House and the FreeTHEM Center, but we also need people to be generous in helping us reach those goals, and so we’re calling on the community to say, listen, we’re going to buy a bed,” Galloway said.

With the continuation of the movement, Project Mona’s House is bringing back to the city the true meaning of freedom.

“Buffalo is going to repeat the history that it once had, that freedom seekers of the past knew that if they could just get to the Western New York region, that they could be free,” Galloway said. “It’s happening again. People from all over the nation will know that, ‘If I could just get to Western New York, it’s a beautiful place to live with amazing people, amazing community leaders, and what we’re going to be able to do with our lives, we won’t be able to do anywhere else because Project Mona’s House is there.’”