The Rensselaer Christian Association is currently doing a huge humanitarian push for Love146.org, a non-profit organization whose goal is to end child sex trafficking. The Love146 website defines child trafficking as “the act of recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of a child (any person under the age of 18) for the purpose of exploitation either within or outside a country.” The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 1.2 million children are trafficked annually throughout the world. Sadly, child sex trafficking is a lucrative business, with over 12 billion dollars spent per year.
Rob Morris, Lamont Hiebert, Desirea Rodgers, and Caroline Hahm founded Love146 in 2002 after a trip to Southeast Asia. While there, the male co-founders went undercover with investigators to a brothel. They witnessed children as young as four and five years old being sold for sex.
The Love146 website offers a partial account of their experience: “ ... standing shoulder-to-shoulder with predators in a small room. Looking at little girls through a pane of glass. All of the girls wore matching red dresses. They stood, blankly watching cartoons on TV. They were vacant, shells. There was no light in their eyes, no life. To be missing this was shattering ... There was one girl. One girl who wouldn’t watch the cartoons. Number 146. She was looking beyond the glass. She was staring out at us. Her piercing stare. There was still fight left in her eyes. There was still life left in her.” This little girl was the inspiration behind naming the organization Love146.
Love146’s work initially began in Thailand, where the co-founders had encountered child 146. Their work has since expanded to Cambodia, the Philippines, India, and soon Sri Lanka. The website explains the reasons for working in these locations: “The countries within which we work are among the predominant centers of the child sex trafficking and slavery industry. The governments of these countries consistently fail to comply with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.”
Love146 has two main programs through which it seeks to combat child sex slavery and exploitation: prevention and aftercare. Some of the main facets of prevention include education about trafficking for children and families in at-risk countries, and funding sustainable community development programs in high-traffic areas. Advocacy prevention, including the coalition of high school and university campuses, is another way that Love146 can raise awareness and concern for the issue of child trafficking.
Love146 also has an established aftercare program for children who are liberated from child trafficking. According to the Love146 website, the impact of trafficking on children includes “HIV and other serious illnesses, psychological trauma, loss of educational opportunities, loss of family and community, and increased vulnerability to further abuse.” Three aftercare programs include a safehome program for survivors; a training program in aftercare, meant to educate people so that they can work with survivors of child sexual exploitation; and aftercare research, which aims to create well-developed programs to restore and empower the lives of survivors.
To spread awareness of this organization, the RCA set up information booths in the DCC and Rensselaer Union both last week and early this week. In addition to providing information about Love146, RCA sold raffle tickets for goodies baskets. The raffle winners will be announced on Friday, March 28, at the culminating event for the Love146 awareness week. This final event will be a free video games party, held on Friday, March 28, from 5:30 pm to midnight. The event is free for all RPI students and will have free food. Video games include Halo 3, Dance Dance Revolution, and Guitar Hero.
Though the video games party is meant to be a fun event, this week is “all about getting the word out about Love146,” said Bailey Richert ’09, chair of the Love146 committee on campus. Students are encouraged to visit Love146.org and join the e-mail list in order to receive news about events, advocacy opportunities, and ways students can help.
