About Us

Grace Place School desires to see South Florida's youth free from sex trafficking and destructive lifestyles.

The Problem

There is an epidemic of American youth being lured and forced into sex trafficking and other destructive lifestyles.

These youth run to the streets desperate to find a safe place and someone who will care. Most of them, predominately girls, will be approached by a trafficker who will attempt to lure them into a life of forced prostitution. These perpetrators are skilled and master manipulators. A vulnerable youth will follow the trafficker once they have been successfully deceived to believe that this trafficker will care and provide for them and make them feel special.

Many young boys have few, if any positive male role models and often witness violence in their homes or the parents are emotionally absent. They turn to gangs and the streets for a sense of belonging and acceptance and are ripe for recruitment as a victim and/or a perpetrator. They strive to become like the gang leaders and their fathers, brothers, or uncles who are doing time in prison and they learn that selling people is a very profitable business.

Even if a student is doing well in school, when one is ensnared in the web of sex trafficking and other destructive lifestyles, typically they will show signs of the abuse and/or involvement. Their grades will drop. School seems to offer little relevance to their lives and is a place where they often meet repeated failure. They can be labeled by peers and adults as hopeless delinquents, runaways, prostitutes, and sluts.

 Click here to listen to Elizabeth Coldren, President and Founder, share about human trafficking, prevention efforts, and our work on Moody Radio of South Florida. 

 

 

The Mission and Vision

As vulnerable youth are being targeted by many for participation in unhealthy, destructive, and illegal lifestyles, Grace Place School is targeting these same young men and women to bring them hope and a fresh start.

Grace Place School desires to see South Florida’s youth free from sex trafficking and other destructive lifestyles. Our mission is to creatively empower at risk youth in order for them to reach their God given potential.

We specialize in job and life skills training, alternative educational instruction, and business entrepreneurship. With the expertise of trained teachers, counselors, interns, and other professionals, this nontraditional educational and training setting provides youth with much needed opportunities for success.

Grace Place School provides a Christ centered, grace filled environment rich in truth and love and void of judgment for youth ages 13-18. Youth of any faith are welcome.

All the teachers that the school employs or contracts with meet one of the following requirements:

  • 3 or more years of public and/or private school teaching
  • Special skills, knowledge, or expertise that qualifies them to provide instruction in subjects taught
  • Baccalaureate Degree or higher

 

Our Founder, Elizabeth Coldren

Elizabeth Coldren, founder and director of The Grace Place School, has a MS in Education with a focus on children with behavior and emotional disabilities and a BS in Communications and Theatre. Elizabeth taught and supervised programs for at risk youth grades K-12 for eighteen years in public school. Her years in the public schools and day treatment centers left an indelible mark in her memory. Experiencing students committing suicide, being gang raped, sleeping in cabs or on the streets, and repeatedly being suspended for violence, she knew that the system had failed these kids. It was during this time that she first heard about the problem of human trafficking.  She was living in a city that was a roadway for trafficking American girls throughout the Midwest and beyond. At the time, she did not want to find out more about the problem because she knew that once she knew more about it, she would have to do something to help and she felt that her hands were already full and she had no idea how she could make a difference to thwart this problem.

Elizabeth left the school system to develop and implement an urban child care center and then joined the staff of Prison Fellowship. She never lost her heart for troubled youth and focused on reaching out to the families and children of inmates.God kept pursuing her regarding the issue of human trafficking, and one night it hit close to home.  She overheard a news report that broke her heart.  There had been a raid on a brothel where the perpetrators were using 10 year old girls to service many clients a night.  The brothel was not in an overseas country somewhere.  It was two blocks away from her house! She could no longer ignore the problem. She made a commitment to God that she would take action to help with the problem doing whatever she could by using her unique talents and experiences.  Later, God moved her to South Florida which is a hotbed for sex trafficking.

Since 2012, Elizabeth has been focusing her extensive experience working with at risk youth and families to lead Grace Place School which provides hope and healing to vulnerable at risk youth in South Florida. She believes that the continued success of Grace Place School depends on strong partnerships with individuals, churches, businesses, and volunteers who have a heart to generously invest in the lives of our “throwaway and forgotten youth.”  Will you join with Elizabeth today in this war against the sale and abuse of young girls and boys?

 

Our Director, Judit Sohr

In the first lead role of her career, Judit served as the Program Manager for a Department of Juvenile Justice commitment facility, working with teen girls who were court-ordered for committing various crimes.  The goal was to help them turn from the destructive path they were on, and direct them toward the plan God had for their lives. After that, and for the past 17 years, she served faithfully at the A.C.T.S. group home for teen girls placed in the foster care system. These girls exhibited the most challenging behaviors in the county and were unable to be placed in less restrictive settings. She believes the Lord called her there for evangelism and discipleship and has always had a heart for the toughest and hardest to reach teens in South Florida.  Judit, a native of Puerto Rico, grew up in and still lives in the city of Hollywood, Florida, with her husband, dog, and 21-year-old cat.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          She and her husband are always willing to help anyone in need. They created and are actively involved in the “Seedling Prison Ministry” in which they counsel, visit, take phone calls from, act as liaisons between the legal system and families, and help incarcerated individuals grow in the Lord. She is beyond excited and humbled in her new role as the Director of Grace Place School, and to continue the mission the Lord laid on her heart over 25 years ago, Psalm 82:3 to, “defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.”