Former Viking Anthony Bass teams up with Stories Foundation to fight human trafficking in Minnesota
MINNEAPOLIS — Stephanie Page is telling the story she believes in, because one day after reading a book, she decided something had to be done — to start a nonprofit that fights sex trafficking. She put her own home in the game.
"My dad was like, 'Well you could make money renting out your house and we could save money and we could start this nonprofit and you could live in our basement,'" Page said. "So I was pregnant with our third child, and me and my husband and our two other kids, we moved into my parent's basement."
Anthony Bass came to Minnesota to play for the Vikings.
"It was one of the best experiences of my life. I'm a guy who grew up with football helmets on my wallpaper," Bass said.
Bass stayed and works for the American Cancer Society. He started Endurance Church in Brooklyn Park. He has done and is doing much.
"As a former athlete, discipline has been a key to my life, right? And so I just took the principals I use from football and I've used them in every area of my life," Bass said. "I have three masters degrees, and I'm also getting my doctorate right now."
At the church, he met Page's father and found out he shared a vision with her — to help stop sex trafficking.
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So on this day, they get together — Page, her father, Bass and Jodi Elliot — part of a board that has an idea to help. They want to build a standalone restaurant in Ramsey, where they have already purchased the land, and allow it to help fund housing of victims. It will be called the Storyteller Cafe and will feature short-term housing for survivors of trafficking.
"[Minnesota is] 13th in the United States for trafficking," Page said. "Shared Hope International, an organization out of Washington state, they grade states on how we're doing on human trafficking, fighting human trafficking, and we got an F last year."
It is difficult to curb the numbers because the issue is a difficult conversation since most people don't know or talk about it like they do other problems in society.
Bass learned by watching a film.
"And it absolutely crushed me what I saw," Bass said. "I saw testimonials of young girls, young boys, mothers, young men, who were trafficked in their own community by their own loved ones."
So he's trying to help Page's mission.
"Sex trafficking in itself is a difficult conversation to even talk about," Bass said.
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The game is simple: they prey on the insecure.
"People that are out there that look for vulnerabilities in people, so people in vulnerable situations — which could be housing, job vulnerability, relationship vulnerability. If you want to be loved, seen, valued," Page said.
That's why she meets with boards and city planners and fights with conviction to try to find a way to make her project work, because she believes it will create a safe place and create necessary conversation.
"Some of the stories are horrible. Depending on how long you've been in that, it determines how you cope with the real world, for lack of better term. So there's just so many challenges they have," Bass said.
That's why they try to figure it out — because the problem is not going away in this world, and Minnesota is part of that world.
To learn more about Storyteller Cafe, click here.