This event is a staff favorite because it gives us an opportunity to meet so many of you for the first time and also to share something that we’re all very passionate about: how to stop the trafficking of young girls.

We were blessed to have several girls from our safehouse in Mumbai over as special guests, as well as a performance by Jason Castro, with Keith Garvin of CBS emceeing and Jeanne Rogers speaking.

We are grateful, as always, to Chalk Cullum & Associates for sponsoring the event, making it possible for all event proceeds to further the work of rescuing girls.

Share and Enjoy

An estimated 200,000 farmers in India have taken their own lives since 1997, according to government statistics.

Photojournalist Michael McElroy met Tekam’s father while he was covering the issue in 2010. He says it became clear that there was a link between the high suicide rate and the country’s water crisis.

View the Photos and Read more at Deadly water crisis grips India – CNN Photos – CNN.com Blogs.

Share and Enjoy

And every day, nearly 3,000 children under five die from diarrhoeal disease caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.

They are among the poorest and most vulnerable children in the world, deprived of nearly all their needs, and denied their right to reach their full potential.

These harsh markers of such elemental inequity should spur us on to do even more. Now is the time — with success on clean water in sight, and failure on sanitation an unsettling prospect — to redouble our efforts.

We must use the momentum of this milestone to focus greater effort and investment on reaching the most disadvantaged children, their families, and their communities. This is a moral imperative, and a practical one, too.

more at Steven M. Hilton: Water And Our World. – Huffington Post

Share and Enjoy

How your church can help give water to communities in India. Pastor Toby Slough from Cross Timbers Church shares in this video about Triple Seven.

$4,800 provides one well for a village community
$777 provides water for 100 people
$388 provides water for 50 people
$194 provides water for 25 people
$39 provides water for 5 people
$7.77 can save one life by providing clean water for one person 

Share and Enjoy

SOS has provided over 500 wells to date in India. While the average cost of a well is $4,800, The water crisis in India is so severe that every personal donation counts.  We designed 777 to make it easy and simple for you to give one person water every month.

To help you spread the word this year, would you consider embedding a picture in your email signature or on your blog?

Google apps allows you to attach an image to your email signature and add a link.  If you have a blog you know what to do with the following:

The address for this image is: http://www.sowerofseeds.org/mail/sticker_savealife.jpg

The link is http://www.777water.org

Help save lives!

Share and Enjoy

Subscribe to the RSS feed for the SOS blog

Please be aware that this video contains explicit content and may upset sensitive viewers (portrayal of drug use and some sexual content)

In 2007 Ashley Judd was involved in making this documentary, talking about HIV and human trafficking in India -via Snag Films

Share and Enjoy

“Mumbai:  A two-month-old baby was stolen from Girgaum and later sold for Rs. 12,000 to a brothel keeper in Kamathipura. Police managed to recover the baby and arrest the culprits on Sunday. Officials believe the gang used to steal infants regularly and traffic them in the red-light area.”

Read more at Two-month-old sold to brothel for Rs 12, 000.

Share and Enjoy

Read more at Rani Hong: Voice of Survivors: Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

Share and Enjoy

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Flannery O’Connor

A flat fronted van, we are in four rows, our luggage in a fifth. Our driver only speaks Nepali and our host broken English.

“These lower caste.” He says, his arms spread wide, encompassing everything we can see from small, square windows. A shanty-town, blue tarps, brown ground, bloodshot eyes, this was the price they paid for their last name.

“So there’s no getting out of this?” I ask. “Not even if they get an education?”

“Education? No. These lower caste. No education for them.”

“So how do they get out? What hope do they have?”

He shrugs, looks forward again. I wait for an answer. “Sometime they get jobs out of here, out of Nepal. Thailand. India. You know?”

It’s a few years later and I am meeting a girl named Rehka. She shares a last name with that of my Nepali host years ago, but she’s traveled to America from India. I ask her if she is Nepali. “Yes!” She nods, her eyes lighting up. “You know Nepal?”

“I know Nepal,” I say. I remember the shanty town, the tarps, the hopelessness of faces caged in by genes and a system so unjust to my western ethnocentricity.

Rehka is beautiful, with the light, gentle look for which the Nepali are known. Her wide set eyes are bright, her skin clear, her smile brilliant. She laughs easily and is comfortable immediately among us. She sits gracefully on the floor of our office and tackles a menial task I’ve been putting off in the busyness of the week. She chatters in Hindi and English, switching easily between the two, even though neither are her native language.

She seems like royalty in joyful servitude. A humbling juxtaposition.

And yet, Rehka was sold by her older brother into a scheme more complicated than she could have ever imagined.

The caste system is as unjust as it seems to any westerner raised in an equal-opportunity culture. If “If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” is the our mantra, then “Keep your eyes down, and get what you’re given,” is the mantra of the lower castes. Illegal activity, therefore, seems to be the only way for them to get a little pocket change—which is all her brother received in the trade for her life.

Rehka was drugged repeatedly and driven to Asia’s largest Red-Light District in Mumbai, India. Passed from person to person, each one a different link in a chain that closed more tightly around her over the next week, until she was caged completely.

For the next few weeks Rehka was drugged intermittently and beaten regularly. When her resolve and will were finally perceived to be broken, she was delivered the news that she now owed an insurmountable debt to her captors which could only be paid back one way: sex.

In five years, a child goes from infancy to speaking in full sentences, writing simple ones.

In five years, a gangly middle-schooler graduates valedictorian.

In five years, a hard-worker at a blue collar job in America can make $125,000.

In five years, Rehka was raped an average of 20 times a day. About 36,500 sexual assaults. At the equivalent average of $1 an act, and yet she still could not pay the fullness of her “debt” to her captors.

When she met the director of our rescue program in India, she was broken and void.

I met her seven years later, carrying herself like humble royalty.

As I ask her about her story, she glows, recounting how excited she is to be a part of a ministry that is rescuing girls like her and rehabilitating them, loving them, counseling them, offering them something that supersedes any caste system: the Gospel.

When she says this, I realize that the rescue of trafficked victims is so much more than beating a system, shutting down brothels, arresting pimps, madams, and greedy older brothers. The rescue of trafficked victims is the reflection of the heart of the Father.

The Father says, come to me, all you who are weary, burdened, heavy laden.

All of you.

All.

The caste system seems to be one of the most unjust systems implemented any religion I see around me, subjecting humans to begging, stealing, and selling humans. The sex-trade system seems to be a system of dogs, beating children into submission to horrific acts. The rescue of these girls seems impossible, 60,000 women in this red-light district ALONE. The finances needed to compete with a $32 billion a year global industry, seem insurmountable.

But for the Gospel.

The Gospel.

The Gospel breaks into these castes and levels them, setting free captives in red-light districts and in shanty slums. The Gospel breaks into my western ethnocentricity and levels me at my heart—these are humans, living, breathing, thinking humans, no different than me. The Gospel is the only thing that can penetrate the hearts traffickers and victims alike—the only thing that can free them from the cage of greed and the brothel cage.

“Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.
I will say to the north, Give up,
and to the south, Do not withhold;
bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the end of the earth,
everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”
– Isaiah 43:5-7

If you’d like to share this post on Twitter or Facebook, consider using using this copy:

A true story from @loreferguson on the Red-Light District: http://bit.ly/xmOrU2 #humantrafficking

You can participate and make a difference, by helping to rescue and restore victims:

$1,800 rescues and provides one year of care for a girl

$ 900 rescues and provides for 6 months of care

$ 450 rescues and supports a girl for 3 months

$ 150 supports a rescued girl for one month

If you can’t give $150 please consider giving $75 to combine with another’s gift to rescue a woman or young girl from this injustice.

or take a pledge to end this horrible form of slavery…

Share and Enjoy

“‪Human trafficking is a $32 billion global industry, the fastest growing and second largest criminal activity in the world, tied with arms and after drug dealing. I applaud President Obama’s effort to bring this issue to the forefront in the minds of Americans by proclaiming January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

“Modern slavery takes many forms, including forced labor, sex trafficking and involuntary domestic servitude. There is no one type of victim — men and women, adults and children are all vulnerable. From every corner of our nation to every part of the globe, we must stand firm with victims.

“In June, I launched a National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) presidential initiative called ‘Pillars of Hope: Attorneys General Unite Against Human Trafficking.’ Attorneys General will continue to make the case that action must be taken to hold traffickers accountable, to mobilize care for victims and to build public awareness.

“Although law enforcement has made great strides, more work needs to be done. We stand with those throughout the world working every day to end modern slavery, bring traffickers to justice, and empower survivors to reclaim their freedom. I urge all Americans to educate themselves about all forms of modern slavery and the signs and consequences of human trafficking. Together, we will combat this crime within our borders and join with our partners around the world to end it.”

via NAAG | January Proclaimed As National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

Share and Enjoy