Prevention Projects and Modern Day Slavery?

What do sewing classes, small business initiatives, community schools, awareness campaigns and discipleship have to do with the fight against human trafficking, also known as modern day slavery? If you want to know what exactly human trafficking is, be sure to read our blog “What is Human Trafficking?” I mean after all, these prevention projects have nothing to do with capturing traffickers or rescuing women from sex slavery.

So why do we at Freedom Challenge Africa put so much focus on prevention?

We say “prevention is better than cure.” This means it is easier to stop something from happening in the first place than it is to repair the damage after it is happened. While we are very excited when someone finds freedom, our hope and prayer would be that people don’t find themselves enslaved in the first place!

Less than 2% of victims are ever rescued.

According to the United Nations less than 2% of trafficked victims are ever rescued. And unfortunately, many rescued victims fall back into slavery for a variety of reasons. Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal activity in the world. It is so very complex, making it very difficult to rescue trapped people. Therefore, if we can bring awareness and prevent people from being enslaved in the first place, it will prevent a huge amount of pain. The probability of the person being enslaved for the rest of his or her life is also avoided! In addition, rescued people experience years, if not a lifetime, of recovering mentally, emotionally, and/or physically from the trauma they experienced.

This is where our prevention projects come in!

We offer education, skills training, and basic support systems to help make vulnerable people less vulnerable. This helps break the cycles of poverty, abuse, and misuse before life-long damage is done to women and children.

In addition, we believe that prayer is crucial. We cannot save people and we cannot change hearts. But we can pray to the Creator of the universe who has the power to do so! This is ultimately a spiritual problem. So while, yes we are preventing a lifetime of physical, emotional, and mental pain through these projects, we also pray these projects bring spiritual freedom where these women and children will be in the presence of Jesus Christ for eternity!

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram to get more updated information on our projects!