Not For Sale is a non profit organization that equips and mobilizes Smart Activists to deploy innovative solutions tore-abolish slavery in their own backyards and across the globe. In other words, they have taken a stand against human trafficking and want to end it for good.
Every day there are people around the world, including in the United States, that are stolen and sold for a price. Some are taken against their will and some are taken with the consent of families in promise of a better life. Either way, people are being stolen by evil people and it needs to put to an end.
I want to take a moment to share a few statistics about human trafficking:
27 million: Number of people in modern-day slavery across the world.
800,000: Number of people trafficked across international borders every year.
1 million: Number of children exploited by the global commercial sex trade, every year.
50%: Percent of transnational victims who are children.
80%: Percent of transnational victims who are women and girls.
161: Countries identified as affected by human trafficking.
Do these numbers shock you? 27 million people are being sold into slavery? Really? And why are there not many people standing up to fight against human trafficking? Because many people do not know it is going on. Yes! These numbers are correct and they are growing each year. The statistics are not just numbers, they are people. People just like you sons and daughters. People just like you.
How does this happen?
Most of the time, a person will go to a community that is severely under privileged to recruit young children between the ages of 12-17. The person recruiting will talk to a family and promise them a better life for their child. They will tell them they have a job for their child in another country where the child will be making lots of money. After the recruiter has convinced the family that there is a better life for their child, the recruiter will offer the family a price for their daughter or son that is hard to refuse because of their economic status. Usually, the family is uneducated about this scheme and sees it as a blessing or an opportunity they cannot pass up. The family then takes the money because they want a better life for their children and sends their children off with a complete stranger who has just bought the child.
After the child is bought by the recruiter, He/She will then take the child to an auction to sell him/her to a brothel owner. Once the child is bought by the brothel owner, the brothel owner will begin to control the child. This usually happens by forcing the child to do drugs so they get hooked on the drugs. The addiction creates a dependency on the brothel owner to provide them drugs which keeps them coming back to the owner even if they try to escape. It’s slavery.
Eventually, the sex slave becomes dependent on drugs and sleeps with around 40 men per day only to receive a stiffen of drugs to get them through the day. Most of the sex slaves are mentally and physically abused so they will not try to escape.
Another way recruiters get women is by kidnapping them. The recruiter will scout out people, mostly women who are children and teenagers, for days and at the perfect opportunity they will snatch them up. After they lure them in by some kind of trap and steal them, they take them to a brothel owner and sell them.
We the people need to fight back. Human trafficking is a huge issue around the world and it needs to be abolished. Here are some ways to help abolish this issue:
- pray for the trafficked to be rescued
- pray for justice
- pray for the traffickers to get caught
- pray that families will not buy into the scheme
- educate yourself and others about human trafficking
- donate to organizations who are fighting against human trafficking
- get involved with organizations fighting human trafficking
To abolish human trafficking is not an easy task. The reason it is so hard to abolish human trafficking is because it is usually invisible to the eye. However, there are organizations that have made it their mission to abolish human trafficking around the world. To learn more about this issue and for more information on how you can help, here are a few organizations against human trafficking:
http://www.notforsalecampaign.org/
http://www.endhumantrafficking.org/
http://www.humantrafficking.org
https://www.tinyhands.org
I encourage each one of you to learn something about human trafficking and get involved to end this issue for good.
