We sit in a classroom and learn about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, but we don’t educate our children or ourselves about the slavery that happens in our own backyard…
This month, my team is working with an organization called Not For Sale.” They are a nonprofit that hopes to bring awareness to the world about human trafficking internationally, nationally, and locally. Our team’s main focuses this month are a 5K we are running (aka organizing) this coming Saturday, as well as speaking engagements in local churches, colleges, and businesses around Atlanta. Our agenda is to BRING AWARENESS.
I have the opportunity every day multiple times a day to explain why I am here in Atlanta. I get to educate people on the CURRENT issue of human trafficking.
This is an issue that 95% of those I have talked to ranging from upper class, middle class, homeless, black, white, young, old, that HAVE NO IDEA that slavery STILL exists today, let alone on their own streets.
2 years ago, I was one of the ignorant. I knew that some slavery existed in Africa, but that was it. I had no idea that Toledo Ohio was #4 for highest trafficking locations in the nation. Nor, that 180,000 people are trafficked in and out of our borders every year. These were not realities to me.
Tonight I sat in a room of 50 upper-class Americans and listened to a man from Ghana that was a child slave in the fish industry. He luckily escaped at the age of 13 after 7 years of captivity. He was sold by his own father. After his story during Q&A I was boggled by a particular question asked…
“Does slavery happen anywhere else in the world besides Africa?”
We are ignorant. Me included.
Our nation needs to wake up. The body of Christ needs to walk up, humanity needs to wake up.
- 161 countries have been identified as affected by human trafficking.
- In Atlanta alone, 800-1000 adolescent girls and boys are trafficked in Atlanta specifically for sexual exploitation.
- Average age: 14
- Toledo, Ohio has been cited by the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as a top U.S. recruitment city for trafficking children into commercial sexual exploitation
When I was younger, I remember thinking to myself, if slavery still existed like it did in the “olden days,” I would do something about it.
Whelp Allie, its here. It’s happening. What am I going to do about it?
Whelp, you know about it… what are YOU going to do about it??
