WOV ORANGE COUNTY ADVOCACY

Karen Stockman
Advocacy Chair
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GOALS FOR OUR 2009-2010 ADVOCACY COMMITTEE 

 In our role as advocates for the poorest of the poor women and children in our world, our Orange County Chapter of Women of Vision plans to focus on two areas of the world in addtion to the United States--Africa and the Middle East. Our goal is to inform and educate our membership and friends about the grim realities for women and children in these areas.

We want to provide opportunities to also encourage our educated membership, who can then do the same with our governmental leaders and decision makers. The World Vision Senior Advisor for Global Affairs, Serge Duss, will provide us with an educational film, "The Wall," which we can use in educating our membership and friends.

Our 2007 Spring Luncheon Event, "Faces of Courage," was fortunate to have the dynamic Marian Wright Edelman as featured speaker. She challenged us to become involved with fifty Liberian women who will be trained there for one year in preparation for coming to US universities the folowing year. Additionally, she encouraged us to address the plight of the nine million children the United States without medical insurance. She truly put our hearts and minds to work.

Together, we can all make a difference in many women's and children's lives throughout this world. One of the first steps is education to determine how and where we can be most effective. Then, with faithful hearts, action will naturally follow as we work to make each day be filled with a little more hope for those lives we touch.

Web sites for further study and education may include the following:

World Vision Site for Advocacy
www.seekjustice.org 
U.S. House of Representatives 
www.house.gov
U. S. Senate
www.senate.gov
Children's Defense Fund
www.childrensdefense.org
Children's Defense Fund--CA
www.cdfca.org
International Justice Mission
www.ijm.org

                      
ADVOCACY UPDATE:

           MINISTRY ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of women and children affects over 1, 100,000 humans world wide each year! It is the second largest criminal industry in the world and the fastest growing.

In order to stop these atrocities, there is much work to be done. This is an international, national and local task! We must first start with creating awareness and education as to the magnitude of the problem. Then we can move forward to find solutions that will bring this tragic situation to an end.

According to the U. S. Department of State, approximately 800,000 to 900,000 victims annually are trafficked across international borders world wide, and between 14,500 and 17,500 of those victims are trafficked into the United States.

Victims of trafficking are subjected to force, fraud, and coercion for the purposes of forced labor, such as domestic servitude, restaurant work, janitorial work, sweatshop factory work and migrant agricultural work with little or no compensation. Others are forced into areas of sexual exploitation such as prostitution or the sex entertainment industry.

Traffickers use various techniques to instill fear in victims and to keep them enslaved. Some keep their victims under lock and key. However, the more frequent practice is to use less obvious techniques including debt bondage...fabricating financial obligations honor-bound to satisfy debt and isolation from the public...limiting contact with outsiders and making sure that any contact is monitored or superficial. Another tactic of traffickers is confiscation of passports, visas, and any other identification documents, which also keeps the victims dependent.

These are but a few examples of how this gigantic human trafficking industry functions. The following lists include ways that the public can become educated about the problem and also answers the questions of how we can begin to help solve it. For more information or if you suspect that you may have seen something involving trafficking, call the HOT LINE
number: 888-373-7888!

READING LIST....Sex Trafficking:

The Global Market in Women and Children
by Kathryn Farr

A Modern Form of Slavery: Trafficking of Burmese Women and Girls
into Brothels in Thailand
Published by Human Rights Watch

Comfort Women 
by George Hicks

Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the United States,
Canada, and Mexico.
By Drs. R. Estes and N. Weiner

The Forces of Demand in Global Sex Traffricking
By Morrison Torry and Sara Dubin.