Holiday Mission (it's BIG)

This came in my inbox and I wanted to share with you because I love not only her devotion to helping others, but the cool jewelry she sells (100% of the profits go to charity). This is an opportunity to get some beautiful gifts for the people in your life AND to contribute to a great cause.

I'm so excited to be writing to you today because I have big things to share. If you are new around here, I want you to know that Sela Designs is changing the world and you are part of it. This holiday season, we are going to do amazing things - together.

Every holiday season, we choose one BIG mission goal. Here are the last three we've completed:

 

2017: $5,000 given to Life House to help break the cycle of generational poverty

2018: $6,300 given to fully fund a sex trafficking rescue mission through IJM

2019: $10,000 given to build a well in Malawi through charity: water

 

For 2020, the dream has grown. The mission has grown. Our community has grown. 

 

My heart is racing as I type these words: our mission for Holiday 2020 is to FULLY FUND 3 SEX TRAFFICKING RESCUE MISSIONS. 

 

Yes, you read that correctly! Not one mission, THREE! It's a lofty goal to give $20,000, but friend, think about those women and children who will be freed. Picture their faces. Imagine what rescue means to them. 

 

From now through December, we're going to make every sale count toward our big, outrageous goal. Here's what you can do:

 

1. Share Sela Designs and our mission with your friends, family, and co-workers.

2. Wear the jewelry & talk about our purpose.

3. Share us on social media. Like, comment, save & share. It all helps.

4. Gift Sela Designs to teachers, friends, family & anyone else you can think of. Let them be a part of this mission too!

 

This mission is big and bold, just the way we like it! Let's do this.

A Cry of the Heart

A Cry of the Heart 

by Debra Rush and Penelope Childers

My friend!

You know I have an interest in raising awareness about human trafficking, so when the opportunity came to read and review this book by Debra Rush and Penelope Childers, I gladly took it.

This book! So well-written about such a dark and heavy subject. I cried and hoped and cheered for Debra during her horrifying ordeal. I highly recommend reading this one. Talk about it with your friends and family. Education is one of our best tools in combatting this.

Here's my posted review on Amazon and Goodreads:

I don't typically read non-fiction simply because I don't generally enjoy it. This book, however, piqued my interest because I have supported or follow organizations like O.U.R., Shared Hope International, and SariBari India. It is so incredibly well-written (with the perfect amount of detail), thought-provoking, and engaging that I had a difficult time putting it down. I don't need to put any of the book details, as they are in the book description and other reviews, but I loved that Debra is so open about her spiritual journey and the way God led her and directed others to her. There are so many organizations out there devoted to helping these survivors. If not Breaking the Chains, find another one and do something. You CAN make a difference in helping victims overcome this tragedy that occurs globally but more specifically in your town or city.

You can get it in paperback or ebook on Amazon.

Will You Do Something Part 2

More information on preventing sex trafficking with a huge thank you to Ashleigh Becker at SelaDesigns and her work in this fight.

She says:

Just a quick recap: We talked about how good kids end up getting trafficked too and what parents can do to keep their kids safe. This week I want to highlight kids that are high-risk and prime candidates that traffickers seek out.

On Monday, I listened a seasoned detective speak for more than two hours about sex trafficking in the county next to mine. She has more than 10 years of experience working in this area and had countless heartbreaking stories. 

From the time I sat down until the time we walked out of the meeting, my pen never left the paper. The information was so overwhelming I knew I needed to write it down in order to process it more fully later.

My husband looked at me and said, "Boil it down to two highlights. What would they be?" And here's what I said:

1. I heard the ages 13, 14, and 15 over and over and over again.
2. A trafficker will spend up to 2 years pursuing and grooming a victim because he can sell her 10-30 times per night and 80% of the time that starts on social media.

Those are the two things I still remain stunned by. 


Let's talk about traffickers for a minute:

• Many are good looking, charismatic, articulate, muscular and appear to be "nice".
• Can be men or women. Women traffickers are typically the meanest type. 
• They have honed a skill and are very good at it.
• Everything boils down to control over the victim and here's how they get it:
  •  DRUGS - many victims are shot up against their will and then forced to reach a    quota in order to get the drugs their bodies crave
  • Physical violence 
  • Threats to hurt their loved ones
  • Debt bondage
• Sometimes it's a family business. Boys are raised to believe girls are sex objects that should be sold. Girls are raised to believe they are only good for sex. It is a culture. 

Now, let's talk about high-risk victims:

• Boys are underrepresented and get trafficked too
• Runaways and homeless kids are an easy target
• People looking for freedom in America or from their family
• Disabled people
• People with mental health issues
• Undocumented people (this is especially true in labor trafficking situations as well)
• People with addiction issues - recruiting often happens at NA & AA facilities and rehab clinics
• Prior trauma or abuse create vulnerability
• Anyone labelled a "trouble maker" by society

There's a motto among traffickers, "Promise her heaven. Take her to hell."And that is exactly what traffickers do: promise victims everything they ever wanted, give them a little of it to make it feel real and then take them to hell.

 

 

I know this is heavy. I know these words are difficult to read. I know that maybe you don't want to know anymore, but friend, please don't turn away. 

Take the anger, hurt and pain you feel and let it fire you up to raise awareness and be a light in the darkness. What to be a part of the solution? Here's what you can do:

1. Know a kid that falls in 1 or more of those high-risk categories? Be their place of safety, the adult they can trust to love them no matter what. 
2. Volunteer at organizations like Big Brothers, Big Sisters who are working to create safety for at-risk teens. 77% of kids in foster care will be trafficked.
3.  Educate every young person you know about the dangers of putting too much information on social media. Urge them to use private profiles and skip the hashtags.
4. Keep your eyes open - be aware of people around you. If you see a man in a gas station with multiple young girls who won't look up, seem overly submissive or look malnourished CALL THE POLICE. If you see something that doesn't look or feel right, it probably isn't. If you are wrong no one gets hurt. If you are right, a life gets saved. 

This is a fight worth fighting. You know what the solution is? IT'S YOU! You and I are the solution to this crisis. Just having this knowledge is great, but doing something with it will change our communities.

Thank you for being a voice for the hopeless and defending the cause of the most vulnerable. 


Me: I hope this is something you will take seriously, that you will talk to your children/grandchildren about. It's an ugly topic, but kids need to know how to protect themselves. 

Will You Do Something? Part 1

I believe in the goodness of humankind--I see it around me every day. But I also know, that people don't always choose the good. My heart hurts when I see the awful things we humans do to each other.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."  --Edmund Burke

PART 1

Human sex trafficking. I have posted about this before, but Ashleigh Becker of SelaDesigns recently shared via email some information she learned from an anti-trafficking organization in her community.

This is what she had to say:

Last week I spent 90 minutes talking with a rep from Eye Heart World, a local anti-trafficking organization in WI. My entire purpose for the call was to get some real answers to my questions:

1. What does sex trafficking look like in my city?
2.  What can I do about it?

Human trafficking is happening in every county in my state. If it's happening here I'm going to go ahead and say it's happening where you live as well. Today I want to talk specifically about sex trafficking (labor trafficking is another wide-spread problem).

I fully understood the big picture stories of girls being taken, stolen and things like that we often hear about, but I know that's not actually what usually happens. I needed to understand how a girl who grew up in a great family, doesn't have an issue with drugs or partying, ends up being trafficked.

Here's what I learned:

1. Kids get angry at their parents, no matter how great the parents are. And in today's world, they take that anger to social media. They don't realize what they are doing when they write a post about how awful their parents are and use a hashtag like #ihatemymom or #mylifesucks. 
2.  Traffickers are interested in one thing - making money. They are skilled in their craft. They prey on kids who are angry with their parents or have any type of a problem at home. 
3.  Traffickers know how to speak 13 year old girl lingo! They will befriend "good girls" on social media and spend up to a year building that relationship. Eventually they will arrange a face to face meeting. 
4.  Traffickers will work in different ways to take the victim to the next level - maybe start buying gifts or playing with their emotional state - whatever they need to do to build trust and eventually control.

Now you may be wondering how/why the girl ends up having sex for money. I certainly was! Here's a common scenario: the trafficker invites the girl for a weekend away or to a party. She goes. He gives her a lot of alcohol or drugs. She passes out. He lets 5 men have sex with her. She wakes up naked and wonders what happened.

The trafficker shows her pictures of the night and all the men the girl has had sex with. He tells her that if she doesn't continue to do it he will ruin her life - tell her parents and friends what she has done, etc. The trafficker now has control over his victim.

That's heavy, difficult to read. Need a break? My heart is racing as I write this...

Friend, this is just one common way traffickers work. There is more, but that's enough for today. Let's talk about what we can do to prevent this, because there is hope.

Parents, Aunts, Teachers, Counsellors, Youth Group Leaders, etc - we all have a role to play here. We all have a responsibility to the young people in our lives. Here's how we can help them:

1. PARENTS: know what your kids are doing! Know where they are and who they are with at all times. Have regular check-ins. MONITOR ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES! 
2. Teach young people about trafficking. Tell them the lies that traffickers use. When the lies have already been exposed they lose their power. 
3. Remind teenagers that people on social media are strangers. We do not know who is behind a cute photo. Make profiles private. Don't ever tag your current location.

Small steps in the right direction change the world. Applied knowledge is powerful.


She is right, applied knowledge is powerful. Make sure the kids in your life know about this. Be proactive, be part of their lives, make a difference. Another way you can support this is by giving to organizations in your community/globally who fight this. Shop their sites, give a little every month, talk about it with your friends and your kids. As soon as they have access to social media, we should be having these conversations. If you think they're too young to have these conversations, then maybe consider that they are too young for social media.