On Saturday September 29, 2007, The Ratanak Foundation is sponsoring a conference called Slaying The Giant: Ending Child Sexual Exploitation. We invite all those who are living in the GTA and Ontario area to come and learn about this issue and how we can advocate and take action on behalf of those who have no voice! Below is an except from our brochure.
Over 200 years ago William Wilberforce was successful in bringing a campaign before the British Parliament that ended the transatlantic slave trade. Wilberforce saw that human beings who had been created in the image of God were being treated like common cattle. They were branded with an iron, bought, sold and condemned to live out their lives in slavery. He believed that God made all men equally and that the mark burnt onto the skin of these humans was an atrocious injustice.
That same spirit that whispered in Wilberforce’s ear to end the slave trade whispers in our ears today. Currently, there are 27 million slaves around the world; which totals more lives enslaved than during the 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade. Nowhere has this modern day slavery’s impact been felt more brutally than on children who are being bought and sold for the purposes of sexual exploitation. According to the U.S. State Department, more than 1 million children are exploited in the global commercial sex trade each year. Many of these children, ranging in ages from as young as 3 to 15 years old, are either sold into prostitution to pay off family debts or forcibly recruited on the street to work in brothels. God does not look at these children as statistics ---they have names, they have personalities, they have hopes and dreams because He has fearfully and wonderfully created them for a purpose.
Every child driven into prostitution is one too many. Why? When will it end? What, if anything, can be done now? Are we willing to stand up and be counted among the courageous and the just to fight for the rights of these children? Just as Wilberforce was a man whose convictions compelled him to act, God is looking for men and women who will speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves (Proverbs 31:8). He is looking for people who will stand up against these injustices, remove the chains that bind people and set the oppressed free.
