IWU Students Help Fight Trafficking
May. 4, 2009
Stephen Cady, son of General Publisher Don Cady, and Mike Kaiser are among hundreds of Wesleyan higher education students who have joined the effort to end human trafficking. A recent study trip to Kolkata (Calcutta), India, gave them first-hand knowledge of the worldwide problem.
Following is an interview with Mike, the soon-to-be college senior and English major from Rapid City, South Dakota.
Most of your time in India was spent doing what?
We went to Kolkata (located in northeast India with a population of more than seven million) in order to meet and learn from different organizations that specifically employ women to get them out of the sex trade in the city.
Stephen (son of Don Cady, General Publisher of Wesleyan Publishing House) and I both work with a group that makes handmade journals to help support women previously forced to work in the sex trade. In some cases, the money has gone to get the women out of prostitution; in others, the money helps support those who are already out but need some financial assistance. We went to India to see working models of businesses that employ former sex workers because that is what we want to do with the organization with which we're involved. Hopefully we can partner with a group in Ghana, Africa, that houses women who were forced into fetish temple worship where they were raped, some from the time they were children.
What are three brief highlights of the trip that stand out to you?
When we went to one business on Monday all of the women were there working. It was an incredible experience to see the place so alive with activity. The women laughed and joked with each other. They have such incredible smiles. We even got the opportunity to work with them for a few hours. We sat on the floor on the top floor of an old apartment building in northern Kolkata and snipped threads and put the finished jute bags into plastic bags to ship. It was a great day.
The last day we were there we volunteered at the Prem Dam, one of the homes run by the Missionaries of Charity. This one is a home for mentally or physically challenged adults. We washed clothes and passed out meals.
We went to the Shishu Bhavan, the children home with the Missionaries of Charity, to sign up to volunteer, but we got there early so they weren't open yet. We had a few hours to kill before they opened, so we walked a bit. Right outside the door sat a homeless man on a blanket. When he saw us walking around he waved to me and sat up on his blanket and motioned for Stephen and me to sit down. It was the most generous gesture we received the entire week, and it came from a man who had nothing but a blanket on the sidewalk.
How does your relationship with Jesus spur you on as an advocate on this issue?
My pastor brought this passage up. It was possibly the first thing Jesus ever spoke as a part of his public ministry, but definitely the first recorded words of his ministry in Luke. The passage is Isaiah 61:1-3.
This is the work that Jesus was about. I want to share in that work: restoring sight, healing broken hearts, proclaiming freedom, and releasing prisoners.
How are you different as a result of this trip?
I have met women who used to have sex for money not because they chose to, but because they were forced to. Some of them were forced by poverty, others forced by people. But now these women have freedom, peace, and joy. Their children are getting an education, and they have a chance to escape the cycle of poverty they were stuck in. I have seen the power that businesses like Freeset and Sari Bari have to change someone's life.
Describe the issue of human-trafficking.
In Kolkata alone, there are 40,000 sex workers or prostitutes: boys, girls, women, and even men, who have sex for money. Some of those people are in that situation because of poverty and sex work is the only way they can make money. Some are trafficked. Children are sometimes kidnapped from their village, brought to the city, and forced to sell themselves. The same thing happens to women. Obviously they don't want to do what they are doing, but they can't do anything to get out of it. If they look for different work, no one will hire them in Kolkata if they know the person used to be a prostitute. So these people are hopeless, forced to have sex because they have no other way to make money and no way out of their current situation.
That is where certain organizations come in. They give these women hope. Unfortunately, a company can't employ 40,000 women. They would if they could, but it's impossible. Over 200 women are employed by one of the three companies [we observed]. That is a small number in comparison to the grand total of the city, but it is a start, and for the 200 or so women who are free it is worth it. It would be worth it for one of those women, because no woman is less important than another. That's the beauty of the gospel and the love of Christ. There is a long way to go, but at the same time the mission of those organizations has already been accomplished.
To learn more about human-trafficking, visit www.wesleyan.org/ww.
