Freedom always ripples outwards. Just last week, our European Director identified 1 survivor and helped her escape. That survivor led us to 16 more survivors. Finding and freeing one survivor can mean rescuing dozens, even hundreds more.
This is one reason why we are eager to start blanketing Romania and all of Europe in anti-trafficking efforts. We have built relationships with organizations who have resources to help us do this. Several of them have offered us their world-class materials for training others to locate survivors and set them free.
We are particularly excited about our partnership with Global Strategic Operatives, or GSO. They train healthcare professionals to identify potential trafficking victims and, once identified, take appropriate action.
Hospitals encounter millions of survivors. Up to 88% of survivors will seek medical care while being trafficked at some point. The vast majority of them will go undetected. By equipping healthcare providers, GSO estimates that up to 3.5 million survivors could be found in the US alone!
Now, they have asked us to pilot their program in Romania and Moldova. Remember that 78% of survivors across Europe come from these two countries. Many of them are trafficked within them before being taken across borders.
We are working to translate GSO’s curriculum into Romanian as we speak. Then, we will begin to establish anti-trafficking task forces within hospital systems. Soon, we will be locating survivors at the epicenter of trafficking in Europe with a scalable model.
If finding 1 survivor can help us free 16 more, imagine what will happen when we’ve equipped an army of healthcare providers. This is how we find and heal hundreds, even thousands of precious souls. Even better, we have the perfect place to bring these survivors once we find them - the Sanctuary.
Your support and encouragement is making it happen. We hold the keys to freedom!