This past Sunday, Imago Dei walked as a team in an effort to raise awareness to stop child trafficking. As a part of IDC’s P.E.A.C.E. plan, this falls under our desire to Care for the Orphan and the Oppressed.
Here are a few of the facts about the issue (taken from www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking, www.polarisproject.org and provided by the SCTNow Raleigh walk). Human Trafficking:
- Is the second largest international criminal industry, $32 billion per year; second only to drug trafficking
- Enslaves hundreds of thousands of victims every year; 80% female, 50% under age eighteen (18); at least 200,000 American children are at risk each year
- Involves use of force, fraud, and/or coercion by traffickers torecruit and control their victims
- Affects all vulnerable people – US citizens, teen runaways, immigrants, children, adults – irrespective of origin
- Occurs as forced labor and sex trafficking throughout the world AND in our local North Carolina (NC) communities
- Is attracted to NC due to conducive factors of tourism, agricultural base, international population, military presence, and multiple interstate highways
James 1:27 reads, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
We, at Imago Dei, want to know, grow, and go. As we know our Creator deeper and grow in His image, we become concerned with the things that our God is concerned with.
Therefore, as His image bearers, God’s love and mercy towards us compels us to go: “seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, please the widow’s cause” and to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God” (Isaiah 1:17)
