BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Girl Vow is a New York City-based gender-focused mentoring and advocacy program for disadvantaged girls.

Founder Dawn Rowe said early on, a very specific issue became an important part of the organization's mission.

"When we started out doing the work of Girl Vow, we had a young person within our organization who went missing and when she went missing, it was eye-opening for us because no one responded to our request for support," she said.

Rowe said as they worked to locate the young woman, they found not only a lack of support but learned many other people were dealing with similar circumstances.

"There's a lot of things that happened to her that she asked me not to divulge but I can say that she's not the same person. She was 18 years old. She's not the same person. When she came back, I didn't know who she was and this is a person who had been in our program," she said.

Girl Vow helped write legislation to create a task force to address the issues surrounding Black, indigenous and people of color or BIPOC women and girls who have gone missing or murdered. The state Legislature passed the bill earlier this year. 

State Senate sponsor Lea Webb said every year, roughly 250,000 women and girls go missing and a disproportionate percentage are BIPOC.

"We have found through some of the data that BIPOC women and girls are often mischaracterized as runaways when in fact they have been abducted, they have been put into human trafficking rings and many other tragic outcomes," Webb said.

She's optimistic the governor will sign the bill into law. The task force would be comprehensive, focusing on root causes, finding ways to provide more funding and resources, and addressing protocols.

The state senator said New York can be a leader in addressing a growing national epidemic.

"There are other states that are interested at looking at what were doing here in New York and would like to also model this legislation," Webb said.

Rowe said Gov. Kath Hochul has an opportunity to significantly bolster the work Girl Vow does.

"The governor, she's in an important position right now because she has the opportunity to advance change in our lives," she said.