Human Trafficking: Churches Must Move Beyond Awareness
/Although the Church excels in bringing awareness to the gravity of human trafficking it must do a better job of mobilizing people to strategically fight the problem, said author and social justice advocate Danielle Strickland recently.“I think the commodification of human beings is one of the gravest and most intense issues of our time,” Strickland told TogetherLA (VIDEO BELOW) before she spoke on stage at Catalyst West in Irvine (April 12-13). “I really feel like history is going to shine a light on this season of the Church and ask, ‘What did you do about it?’”She said the Church is “a good place to start but it’s a bad place to finish,” when it comes to moving beyond simply knowing the problem exists.“The strategy work is where I think we actually need some help, the actual mobilization of people,” Strickland explained. “I think there’s lots of room to improve. There’s safe houses that need to be established. There’s survivor recovery services, outreach and prevention.”Strickland helped the Salvation Army launch SA Justice based in the Los Angeles area several years ago and is now ambassador for Compassion International. She is co-founder of Infinitum, Amplify Peace and the Brave Global Campaign.She told TLA that one of the key elements of fighting human trafficking is partnership.“It’s partnership with community, it’s partnership with anybody really, other churches, other organizations, the NGOs, task forces, homeland security, social services, and really creating partnerships where we work together because the crime is really bigger than any of us,” Strickland said.Seventy to 80 percent of domestic sex trafficking victims in American cities come from the Foster Care system, she said. The statistic could be taken as “paralyzing information, but on the other end, it’s exciting because we know their names. We had this idea that if exploiters can target vulnerable girls for exploitation, why can’t the church target vulnerable girls for redemption? And of course, we can,” Strickland explains. “So, it’s kind of this brave strategy that’s a church based strategy to mobilize the whole church."The Brave Global Campaign is about mobilizing churches to reach vulnerable girls before they’re trafficked.
“Ultimately, the answer for that stat is adoptive families, safe families, Foster Care, but the question is not what do families do, but what does the church do? So we came up with this campaign called Brave where churches create catalytic events in partnership with the local community to actually get the girls at risk of trafficking and say, ‘Hey, we think you are the solution and not the problem.”She adds, “I feel it’s a time when the Church has an answer with the sacredness of humanity. That every life matters to God because everyone was created with the sacred image of God inside of them, and so to acknowledge that, to recognize that, means that we fight things like slavery and trafficking and injustice.”[bctt tweet="It’s a time when the Church has an answer with the sacredness of humanity. That every life matters to God because everyone was created with the sacred image of God inside of them. - Danielle Strickland #humantrafficking " via="no"]
However, when it comes to actually preventing human trafficking in the first place, there is room for improvement. That is where MSAT comes in.The idea is threefold:• To stand at or near trafficking hotspots to raise awareness in communities where trafficking is happening so those communities will engage in the fight against it as well.• To stand as witnesses against the perpetrators in those communities who are paying money to have sex with trafficking victims (many of them underage...or were when they were coerced into it).• To provide a first experience and next steps for men who want to get involved in this battle but have traditionally been on the sidelines, or worse, the main perpetrators.The actual process of a stand involves gathering men for a brief introduction to the issue of sex trafficking and how they can fight it. They then grab some signs (e.g. Men Standing Against Trafficking, Real Men Don’t Buy Girls, etc.), go to an intersection, and stand as a silent witness for an hour and 18 minutes. The timing is specific to remind the men why they are there — to stand for the victims of CSEC (Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children), kids 18 and under. They have flyers available for people who want to know more, and they are usually well-received. There have been incidents with people countering the groups, but even more examples of people who have been inspired, educated, and blown away by this grassroots movement.The initial stand was in June 2015 at MacArthur Park. For the first year, it gained momentum with numbers and circle of influence, moving from hotspot to hotspot monthly: Hollywood, Long Beach, South LA, Pomona, Pasadena, Van Nuys, and Santa Ana. Eventually, the organization came to a point where it could multiply — meeting at various geographies in the same month.Currently, there are five MSAT sites which meet quarterly: Pasadena, Orange County, Pomona, Long Beach, and South LA.If you are interested in starting a new MSAT in your community, please contact Bryan Cullison at bcullison@worldimpact.org or visit the following websites to learn more:
Headline banner photo: Toviah Photography/Albert Halim.