Winner Update: A Safe Place

We work with women who were involved in commercial sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Which happens right here in our backyard. We worked with 190 different victims in the last year alone. Of those women, only four were foreign born victims, the rest of them were from our area. These are women being trafficked, in Wilmington, often times from Wilmington. A lot of times these women have children, 25% of the women we worked with in the last year, had children. Often from their traffickers.

So we utilized your money to address some of these issues, so I wanted to share just a few highlights with you. One of them, I just wanted to tell you about a woman that we worked with named, I’ll call her Amanda. She was pregnant when I first met her, she already had a baby from being victimized in the life. She grew up in a very low income, so she’s a pretty rough woman. She wanted to go get a job, so we were helping her to go do that. She didn’t have any teeth. She has no teeth. So think about trying to go apply for a job, looking at someone who’s pretty and put together and they’re interviewing you and you don’t even have teeth.

So one of the things that we used your money for was to give this woman a set of teeth. Her courage and her bravery were already there, but her self esteem was still low. So that helped her to go apply for her job. She’s now fully employed, she is now our first transition house resident, yes. That’s because of what you did. That is how your money at work. So that’s just one story. We helped multiple women get out of Wilmington who were in extremely dangerous circumstances, where their traffickers were coming after them and after their children. So they couldn’t stay here safely anymore.

So we could utilize the money that you guys provided to put them on airplanes, to send them to places where they wouldn’t be found, where they could start over. We had one mom, she had a little, no I’m sorry, two children. With your funds we helped her relocate, into her first apartment, we paid her down payment, we got her her first week’s worth of food, we got her everything she needed, it was fully furnished. So now she is there, she’s safe, her kids are safe, and she is thriving. Again, this is because of you and what you guys have done.

This year, because of your help, we have provided 1,288 safe nights for women in our city, because of your donations. So thank you.