(PHOTO/April Irvin)
Troy International Justice Mission is a recent addition to organizations on campus that focus on aiding victims of human trafficking by advocating awareness and raising funds for their benefit.
It is a chapter of the International Justice Mission, which describes itself as “a human rights agency that brings rescue to victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression.”
Members are conducting a fundraiser called “Loose Change to Loosen Chains” this week in the Trojan Center.
“It’s a fundraiser where all of the funds go towards funding rescue operations around the world. The average cost of a rescue operation in any given country is $4200,” Chapter President Mac Delorme, a freshman human services major and psychology minor from Atlanta, said. That’s a little bit expensive, so chapters like us can raise about $1000 throughout a year and that’s a fourth of that cost down. That’s only our chapter at our very small school, so it’s very important to have small chapters around the country doing things like that because every little penny or dollar counts.”
Delorme believes that the significance of IJM is because 29.8 million people around the world are being oppressed and their voices have been taken aware for them.
“Troy’s chapter of IJM is important because we pray for the IJM staff around the world, and our job is to fundraise for the places around the world and for the headquarters in Washington D.C. to rescue victims from trafficking and oppression,” Angie Lewis, the organization’s publicity coordinator, said. Both Delorme and Lewis first became aware of the issue of human trafficking and the work of International Justice Mission while each was attending Passion Conference in Atlanta.
“I went to Passion Conference this past year in Atlanta and I learned about human trafficking and how there are 27 million people right now, more than any time, in slavery,” Lewis said. “Half of them are children and it’s a $32 billion industry, which is $20 billion more than Nike makes. That got me, that they make more than Nike.”
“I went to Passion Conference almost three years ago. One of their focuses that year was human trafficking and IJM was one of the main organizations they talked about and they had come and talk,” Delorme said. “That’s how I heard about IJM. I did research on it, and I learned about and increasingly got more involved with the organization. As I got more and more involved, I fell in love with it more and more and with what they do.”
Students interested in getting involved can attend the group’s meeting this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in Trojan Center room 224 or join the organization’s group on Facebook.
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