Night of Freedom!

A21! Easily one of the best organizations out there. Then again, I am bias. I posted briefly about this wonderful organization back in February. I learned about it when attending a conference for young adults called Passion. And a few of the most amazing people you'll ever meet that are in my college group wanted to get involved in helping A21 and other organizations and created Night Of Freedom, as a fundraiser and awareness event.

What is A21?

A21 stands for abolishing slavery in the 21st century. Until earlier this year when I heard of slavery, I thought of those three inch textbooks I carried around in middle school. It was in the past. There's no such thing as slavery any more. I was wrong. 

Statistics 

There are more people in slavery now than there ever has been in the past. It's one of the 2nd largest global organized crime that generates $31.6 billion dollars a year. You can run out of drugs. But you can use humans over and over. The most popular way of modern slavery is sex trafficking. Sex trafficking alone produces 27.8 billion dollars a year. And the average age of a person being trafficked is 12 years old. In America, children runaways are approached within the first 24 hours of being on there own. The traffickers approach them and tell them that they are there to help and give them a feeling of belonging. And once they get them in, they are thrown into sex slavery with other victims. I was talking to a friend about this and they asked, "why don't they escape?" And one of the tactics that the traffickers use, is by putting them into a group of other victims, they cling onto each other for life. And threaten if they escape, the others will suffer. They also get the girls (and boys at times) addicted to drugs. This way, if they meet their quota for the day, they know they will have their escape aka the drugs, which keeps them from fleeing.

What A21 Does

They are working all spectrum's of human trafficking. Preventing people from being trafficked, Protecting and supporting those who have been trafficked, Prosecuting traffickers, and strengthening legal responses to trafficking, and partnering with law enforcement, service providers, and community members to provide comprehensive front against trafficking. To know more in detail visit the website. 

Night of Freedom

For Night of Freedom, we wanted to spread awareness and present ways we could get involved, along with a night of worship!

On the A21 website, they have 21 ways to get involved. And from that list we were able to have different stations that had a way to get involved. We had stations like: 

• Writing encouraging letter to victims that have been rescued and at the A21 house
• Writing letter to congress members about human trafficking 
• Dropping off hygiene products to send the the A21 house
• Prayer room
• Contracts for fasting on the 21st of every month

There are some other terrific organizations in the area such as The Defender, IJM, and Rethreaded that spoke at the event and had booths for people to check out and find ways to get involved!!

Praise & Worship!

Writing Letters to Victims and Congress members.

Praise & Worship!

Praise & Worship!

The Defender Foundation.

Kristin Hart from Rethreaded and IJM. 

It was truly amazing! It was a smaller crowd that anticipated, but seeing and hearing some the younger kids in the youth asking about ways to get involved, was worth all the time that went into it.

*Photographs done by the talented George Bass.