Nine: Love 146 - Not a #Number

END CHILD TRAFFICKING AND EXPLOITATION

Please put this number in  your phone in case you ever need to report human trafficking: 1-888-3737-8888

January is National Human Trafficking Awareness Month.  Love 146 had to be my first choice of the month I first found out about Love 146 at a fundraising at Kent State University. I live near Kent and also not far from Toledo, Ohio, "Toledo being identified as the fourth highest ranking city in the nation for recruiting victims into the illegal trade." 
(https://www.odh.ohio.gov/en/features/odhfeatures/Human%20Trafficking%202015.aspx)
Before it was named, the co-founders of Love 146 were taken undercover to a brothel, in which children were being sold for sex. One child in particular caught their eyes, Child Number 146, and as the site states, "Her name became a number. Her number became our name." I am going to copy part of the story below because it is too powerful to miss:

We found ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder with predators in a small room, looking at young girls through a pane of glass. All of the girls wore red dresses with a number pinned to their dress for identification.
They sat, blankly watching cartoons on TV. They were vacant, shells of what a child should be. There was no light in their eyes, no life left. Their light had been taken from them. These children…raped each night… seven, ten, fifteen times every night. They were so young. 

Thirteen, eleven… it was hard to tell. Sorrow covered their faces with nothingness.
Except one girl. One girl who wouldn’t watch the cartoons. Her number was 146. She was looking beyond the glass. She was staring out at us with a piercing gaze. There was still fight left in her eyes. There was still life left in this girl….
All of these emotions begin to wreck you. Break you. It is agony. It is aching. It is grief. It is sorrow.

– Rob Morris

President and Co-founder  https://love146.org/love-story/

There are many ways we can all help with the human trafficking problem: donate, fundraise, volunteer and more. Two of the main things I would suggest are 1) be informed (https://love146.org/slavery/) and 2) report human trafficking (https://love146.org/action/report/) 1-888-3737-8888.  Here are other resources for identifying human trafficking  http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/orr/resource/fact-sheet-identifying-victims-of-human-trafficking
Love 146 also has e-cards you can send at any time along with you donation here: https://love146.org/ecards/, so when I donated our Donations by the Dozen today, I sent one to myself.
I have so many stories about our various nonprofits during this Donations by the Dozen journey, but here is one from last year. I was in Portland (actually for SMART, yesterday's Donations by the Dozen feature), and I had this lovely, clever, witty, professional and informative driver for the whole day as I visited other organizations you'll meet soon. As the day progressed and we chatted more and she told me her human trafficking story. She is not the only survivor I've met, but the main point I want to make is like any other life tragedy, sometimes we aren't aware that people right in front of us have been through so much hardship and, often, horror. But people can be helped, can survive and can even thrive with our help. The first half of the day, I only saw this amazing person who worked hard to finish school and support her family with professionalism and friendliness. She was one of the most together women I had met in some time, which is how the conversation began and led to revealing her history. We just never know who we will meet and what they've experienced.



You can find the Donations by the Dozen posts here on google, on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/graceinitiative/, on twitter https://twitter.com/MarciGoLightly, or on the Grace Initiative Foundation Tree, LLC's website http://www.graceinit.org/donations-by-the-dozen.html, where you can enter your email to subscribe for an email daily dose of Donations by the Dozen. Thanks and cheers to charity, m