Redeeming Love is an organization that was born out of the rising number of female sex-trafficking victims in the United States. Their mission is to bring restoration to survivors of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. Their vision statement states, “We are a Christ following, faith-based community. We believe it is our responsibility to fight for the cause of the oppressed and to be agents for their healing. We do this by offering care to the whole person in order to achieve their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual healing.”
Redeeming Love was formed through an interaction that founder Charlene Heydorn had with a young sex trafficking victim. Most girls who are trafficked are at their most vulnerable point. They are mostly young girls, ages 12-14, and most come from abusive backgrounds. Traffickers know this, and they use their weaknesses to manipulate them. The girl that Heydorn met desperately wanted to leave, but she had no hope because she was so controlled by her trafficker, and she remained in slavery.
I can’t imagine the emotional strain of witnessing something like this, and it was this event that fueled the beginning of Redeeming Love. Charlene created this organization as a response to the hopelessness that sex trafficking victims live with. The organization is driven by the knowledge that thousands of girls are enslaved with no way out and the desire to change that.
This organization embodies redemption because it is actively working to bring hope to the hopeless. I love that they identified a very real need through personal experience, they recognized that what they were witnessing was wrong, and they created an active plan to correct it. I also love that they are not only working to help survivors recover, but they are also trying to educate the rest of the population on the affects of sex trafficking. They have opportunities for people to volunteer, and they also provide tons of information on how sex trafficking is specifically impacting their community. Through providing a safe rehabilitation program for sex trafficking survivors, and by sharing authentic information about the affects of trafficking, Redeeming Love is committed to the recovery of survivors and helping them discover that even their pasts can be “redeemed, re-purposed, and made new.”
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