When Prevention Meets Policy: What Little Warriors Can Teach Us About Protecting Survivors

Be Brave Ranch in Alberta, Canada

Little Warriors is a national charitable organization based in Canada, founded by survivor and advocate Glori Meldrum. Their mission is to prevent child sexual abuse and support the long-term healing of survivors. Their work is grounded in evidence, delivered with compassion, and urgently needed in a country where far too many survivors remain silenced or unsupported.

Their most widely known initiative is the “Prevent It!” workshop — a free, evidence-based training designed to educate adults on how to recognize the signs of child sexual abuse, respond appropriately, and take meaningful action. Developed in partnership with researchers from the University of Alberta, the program has been validated through peer-reviewed studies and delivered to thousands of Canadians. It helps shift the burden of prevention from children to the adults responsible for protecting them.

Beyond education, Little Warriors operates the Be Brave Ranch — Canada’s first and only long-term treatment centre dedicated specifically to children and adolescents who have been sexually abused. Located in Alberta, the Ranch offers multi-modal, trauma-informed therapy including EMDR, individual and group counselling, art and movement therapy, and family support. Programming is available for children ages 8 to 12, teens ages 13 to 16, and now includes older survivors who were abused in childhood.

So why does this matter to the Restitution Project?

Because prevention and treatment are only part of the solution. The legal system still allows the silencing of survivors through non-disclosure agreements — NDAs that are often signed under duress, in the aftermath of trauma, and used to protect reputations instead of people. Survivors who have done the hard work of healing deserve the right to speak. They deserve the right to pursue justice without legal barriers that retraumatize or erase them.

Little Warriors gives survivors tools to recover. The Restitution Project works to ensure that the systems around them don’t make recovery harder. Together, they confront the same culture of silence from different angles — one through care, one through legislation.

When institutions use NDAs to bury abuse, they undermine the prevention work Little Warriors does every day. When laws change to limit the use of NDAs in abuse cases, they protect the progress made by survivors in therapy rooms, support groups, and places like the Be Brave Ranch.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s urgent. Healing without justice is incomplete. Justice without healing is impossible. And neither should be negotiable.