If We All Do Our Part, We Can Win in the Fight Against Human Trafficking

Churches partner with us by having us speak at their services, sometimes during the homily, most often at the end for 5 minutes where we let church members know that human trafficking is the second largest and fastest growing criminal enterprise in the U.S..    At the table outside after the service, we answer questions and pass out flyers. During the talk we invite church members to a meeting where parents learn how to protect their children and the church can learn how to take action. Given the number of people who attend church, we easily went in front of well over 100,000 people in 5 years.  Our one hour parent/church training has been done with over 4,000 parents and our teen presentation has been done with over 6,000 teens. We did all this with a staff of three.  At the trainings we invite participants to come to a follow up meeting to build a ministry effort or to simply talk about one action they could take that year.   From there, we invited churches to come together to network and share at faith coalition meetings what is working to take action. From the trainings and ministry meetings and the faith coalition meetings where we have talked to hundreds of church leaders, we have learned a lot.  At this site we will share much of what we learned with you. You can find the trainings on the Parent, Teen and Reduce Demand tab.

We make sure during the parent/church training that the pastor has invited all the church ministries to that training.  At the end we ask who in the group who like to be  a part of the effort to fight human trafficking and invite them to another meeting.  At the follow up meeting we find out what people are most passionate about.  It may be Fair Trade, so we talk about what would work to raise awareness so that church members commit to purchasing slave free products. The group may feel strongly about reducing demand, so they would take the kind of actions recommended on our "Reduce Demand" tab.   Their passion may be to support a local non-profit that takes care of victims of human trafficking so we talk about doing a drive or fundraiser.  The group may have members who have been involved in related projects like recruiting foster parents and mentors, so the group follows their lead. The faith community may already be skilled at doing events, so they take on doing an educational conference. Sometimes these efforts become a ministry. With smaller churches a woman's group or men's group or singles group etc. may take on one or two efforts per year. For more ideas on projects that faith communities can do, please see our "Mobilizing Your Commuity" tab.

When we speak at a church or synagogue, the question we are always asked is "Who else in my community is working on this issue?"  They are looking for ideas and how to partner.  So we made 7,000 (3 minute) calls to churches and synagogues in the Southern California area, which is our home base and got email addresses, found out which faith communities were active, etc. and formed several So Cal Faith Based Coalitions.   You can find the model for what we did at that website. These networking meetings are for people who feel called to act, so they can come together to find out what can be done in a faith community.  For active churches at the beginning of the meeting, they have 3 minutes to share what they are doing. Then during the networking session, which is the last third of the meeting, people connect with the faith communities they want to  partner with, who share their interest.  For the middle third of the meeting, there is a speaker like a law enforcement officer who updates the group on what is happening locally and answers questions. Or it could be a speaker like a fair trade organization that lets the group know how they can support them with their local efforts.   These meetings have been invaluable to the group as they inspire participants as to what can be done, who they can partner with and what their resources are.