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There are more than seven million orphans and close to half a million street children in Ethiopia.*

These children of the streets face hardships and horrors those in developed nations can’t even begin to imagine.  They do whatever it takes to survive, regardless of how dangerous or degrading the task may be.  Many, either by force or out of desperation like Melesech, turn to the sex trade, a cruel master that ruthlessly crushes all who serve it.  Even if they manage to get free most have contracted some form of sexually transmitted disease and have given birth to unwanted children who will, likewise, be forced into the streets to perpetuate a tragic cycle.

“I have not seen one good thing about living on the street. Everything is horrible,” says 14-year-old Mandefro Kassa, who grew up as an orphan on the streets of Woreta, Ethiopia*

Melesech’s victory over a terrible past she feared would leave her beyond redemption shines as a testament that the street need not leave its victims twisted and broken beyond repair.  While they may leave that life looking more like the splintered remains of the mighty oaks they might have been under different circumstances, they aren’t without hope of restoration. 

Thanks to the emotional counseling and vocational training offered by ICA’s Mercy Chapel and SAFE program, rescued girls are empowered to become something better, like the Bonsai Tree that the Master Gardener skillfully and lovingly crafts into something majestic and uniquely beautiful, highly prized for the artful designs fashioned by its broken and twisted branches.

While Melesech may have turned her back on the sex trade, she never forgot those still trapped in it. She has made many trips back to Addis Ababa’s Red Light District since her rescue to convince other girls to leave the streets and embrace a positive future in ICA’s SAFE program. Even though she could have easily made a good living as a seamstress after graduating from the program in December of 2009, she chose to go to work for ICA instead and was training to be a SAFE program coordinator.

Melesech may be gone but she leaves behind a legacy of courage and determination.  Her short life shines like a brilliant beacon for the millions enslaved by the streets to follow to hope and freedom.

To find out how you can help rescue and transform the lives of girls like Melesech go to www.crisisaid.org.

*gvnet.com report: Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children

Juliann Troi

Author of Where There Is No Comfort: Seven Days in Ethiopia

Available from www.amazon.com, www.bn.com and http://strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/WhereThereIsNoComfort.html

Author site:   www.julianntroi.com

Author blog:  http://julianntroi.aegauthorblogs.com/

With millions trafficked from 127 countries and exploited in 137 countries, the human trafficking industry has a total market worth of more than $32 billion.*

Melesech was 11-years-old when her father brought her to Addis Ababa and cast her into a life of servitude to her aunt, a move that doomed her to being viewed as less than a second class citizen in the Ethiopian social hierarchy.  Day after day, year after year she was forced to drink a bitter cup of servitude until her young life was all but used up.  She would never again know the innocent joys of childhood or even be allowed to go to school.

When Melesech was 14, her aunt died.  The family kicked her out and she was forced to seek domestic work elsewhere.  The woman she served next proved impossible and after only 6 months she was desperately looking for new alternatives.  She had made friends with some street girls who weaved marvelous tales of having money and freedom.  Thinking that was the solution to her problems, Melesech was lured into the sex trade.

One fateful evening in February of 2007, ICA President Pat Bradley happened to pass Melesech standing in the doorway of her room.  

Prompted by the special ‘nudge’ that often leads him to the most fortuitous of meetings, Pat stopped. He noticed a picture of Jesus over Melesech’s bed and asked her if she prayed.  Turning a wistful eye to the picture, she confessed that she prayed every night for God to get her out of that life.

Pat outlined ICA’s fledgling SAFE program to rescue girls like her from the sex trade, told her of hope in the Jesus she prayed to and offered her the chance to leave with him. 

“Is it really true what you are saying?”

Melesech asked that question three times over the course of their conversation that evening.  Assuming she meant about the program, Pat assured her each time that it was true. 

She didn’t go with him that night but promised to think about it.  When Pat came back a few days later she had made her choice.  Her few belongings packed and in hand, Melesech inquired for a fourth time:

“Is it really true what you are saying?”

“Is what true?” Pat asked, wondering which part of the SAFE program continued to trouble her.

“Will God really forgive me for all I have done?”

Armed with the reassurance that God already had, Melesech turned her back on the sex trade that day to pursue a positive future in ICA’s SAFE program.

Find out more about Melesech and how her life was transformed in Part 2 of The Bonsai Tree: In the Hands of the Master

*United Nations, Press Release Note No. 6152 (2 June 2008)

Juliann Troi

Author of Where There Is No Comfort: Seven Days in Ethiopia

Available from www.amazon.com, www.bn.com and http://strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/WhereThereIsNoComfort.html

Author site:   www.julianntroi.com

Author blog:  http://julianntroi.aegauthorblogs.com/

Every 2 minutes another child is forced into sex trafficking according to UNICEF and the U.S. State Department projects 2010 will see human trafficking become the second largest crime worldwide.

One organization that is committed to putting an end to this crime against humanity is International Crisis Aid (www.crisisaid.org).  ICA founder/president Pat Bradley has long been dedicated to spearheading an assault on the trafficking industry by offering the girls trapped in it a way out.  Every chance he gets, Pat goes to Addis Ababa’s Red Light District looking for likely girls to rescue. His reputation has grown and word of his purpose is spreading. Very often in the past, by the time he left with his newest “Ethiopian daughter,” others had gathered their few belongings and come to him begging to go too. Although it broke his heart, he had to turn them away because there was nowhere to put them.

The silent promise he made to be back for them is what has motivated him to keep praying and working tirelessly to expand the program despite budget constraints and powerful opposition.

Today, ICA has a total of 7 homes in Ethiopia and has rescued 130 girls.

Not long into the SAFE program Pat realized that in order to achieve his goal of reaching as many as possible of the more than 40,000 girls engaged in the sex trade in Addis Ababa, more aggressive measures were needed.  To be effective, there had to be more direct and continuous contact with victims of the sex trade. 

With that in mind, in February of 2010 ICA purchased a building in the RLD itself.  It wasn’t until after the property was bought that Pat learned the building had previously been used as a brothel. 

Thanks to a dedicated crew of volunteers, this former brothel has a new face and a new purpose: church, counseling center and vocational training center.

The miraculous transformation of the property is a beautiful picture of its intended use. 

Instead of only reaching a handful whenever possible, tens of thousands of girls forced to sell their bodies to survive now have open and continual access to a pathway to a better life. 

The Mercy Chapel Vocational Center offers classes in hair dressing, silk screen painting, sewing, and computer training to give girls marketable skills that will allow them to create a legitimate livelihood. 

The first seven girls in the program graduated in December of 2009.  They now live on their own and ‘give back’ by devoting their time and talents to helping ICA reach out to those in need.

The success in Ethiopia has led Pat to start a pilot program in Haiti and ICA has plans to open a SAFE home in St. Louis, MO.  Visit www.crisisaid.org to find out how you can help.

Juliann Troi

Author of Where There Is No Comfort: Seven Days in Ethiopia

Available from www.amazon.com, www.bn.com and http://strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/WhereThereIsNoComfort.html

Author site:   www.julianntroi.com

Author blog:  http://julianntroi.aegauthorblogs.com/

The streets of Addis Ababa are filthy and chaotic; choked with litter and lined by ditches filled with everything from dirty dishwater to human waste.

It has been more than two years since I was driven through Ethiopia’s capital city but I can still clearly recall the multitudes lining the streets.  Sitting, lying, walking; they are the vast and thriving subculture that is a street-dwelling homeless population of staggering proportions. Most seem to be going nowhere in particular, the sum of their existence being what they carry with them and in the place along the curb where they stop.

More than one lay prostrate, contorted, unmoving. The fate that awaits us all eventually has come sooner to these victims of an unsuccessful attempt to eek out an existence in a harsh and unforgiving land. I can’t help but wonder what their last thoughts must have been, caught up as they were in the unimaginable tragedy of dying alone on the street, the epitome of hopelessness.

Today, more than 40,000 young girls in Addis Ababa will be forced to sell their bodies to survive. 

Every day scores of Ethiopian children leave their homes and migrate to the capital city.  Some, hoping to escape the crushing cycle of poverty, come looking for education and job opportunities.  Some are driven from their homes by famine and drought while others leave willingly to escape early marriage or abusive relationships.  Still others are seeking to be free from exploitative labor.  Sadly, instead of finding a better life, the girls in particular, too often become prey to sex traffickers who offer them what appear to be legitimate money making opportunities.

Once entrapped, the girls, most ranging in age from 9-18, are locked in hovels hardly bigger than the size of the cot or mat on which they sleep. Nothing more than slaves, their lives become a living hell as, night after night, they are forced to sexually service as many adult male clients as possible.  Sometimes a dozen or more.

Unfortunately, these girls have little choice but to remain enslaved for, once victimized, they are ostracized.  Rejected by their society, their family, and their friends they lose all hope of ever having a normal, productive life.

Commercial sexual exploitation is on the rise in both rural and urban Ethiopia. 

But there is hope.  It comes in the form of a man with a mission.  His name is Pat Bradley and his organization is International Crisis Aid (www.crisisaid.org).  His objective is to free as many girls from Ethiopia’s sex trade as possible.  His solution?  Go to the Red Light District… and buy a brothel.

Find out how a house of unspeakable horrors becomes a place of limitless hope in Part 2 of Brothel of Hope:  The Mercy Chapel

Juliann Troi

Author of Where There Is No Comfort: Seven Days in Ethiopia

Available from www.amazon.com, www.bn.com and http://strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/WhereThereIsNoComfort.html

Author site:   www.julianntroi.com

Author blog:  http://julianntroi.aegauthorblogs.com/

Seven Days in Ethiopia

 The week I visited, Ethiopia was  in the throes of a years-long drought.  For an agrarian society in which 80 percent of the population lives by subsistence farming, such a stretch can be devastating.  When I was there, 6 million Ethiopians were facing starvation, 1 million of whom were children under the age of 5.  Needless to say, that week in February of 2008 changed my life forever.

SATURDAY, my first day in-country, I saw the little airport and a sprawling un-cosmopolitan city that, in some ways, looked more like a large shanty town.  That night I experienced a tiny, windowless room that was the rented living space for an entire family of 5.  With little more than a long necked black coffee pot on a tiny brazier and a large mesh mat filled with popcorn I was introduced to the incredible warmth of Ethiopian hospitality.

SUNDAY I saw active worship, real joy, and leprosy.  I watched a miracle in the form of a medical clinic, the first of its kind in this area, dedicated and given to a tiny community and the hundreds of thousands populating the hills around it. 

MONDAY my stomach rebelled against a breakfast of goat stomach and intestine and I learned the Ethiopian word for ‘one more’.  I met a teacher who had studied to become a priest but decided instead to walk 3 hours one way to teach middle school children English. 

TUESDAY  I saw beyond the next hill and, as I watched a young boy drink from a stagnant ditch and a melee break out over an empty plastic bottle, realized that water is the most valuable resource in the world. I saw hope renewed and how far ‘a little’ goes in a place where there’s nothing.

WEDNESDAY I saw the face of true human suffering in the form of skeletal babies and hopelessness in the angelic face of a teenage girl bent and broken by a spinal cord deformity caused by malnutrition. I came to appreciate simple pleasures like a shower and a can of Spam.  I experienced serious illness and genuine gratitude for American trained medical professionals.

THURSDAY I said goodbye to my new Ethiopian friends and my sheltered idea of discomfort.  I treasured the luxury of luxury for the first time and appreciated the fact that I could just get on a plane and return to my comfortable life.

FRIDAY I saw in the shell of an orphanage under construction what a little conviction and a lot of determination can accomplish.  I saw young girls being transformed from trafficked and exploited to triumphant and productive and I left Ethiopia with a strong determination to lead those blessed with resources to a greater awareness of their power to make a significant difference in the world.  Find out how at www.crisisaid.org. 

 Juliann Troi

Author of Where There Is No Comfort: Seven Days in Ethiopia

Available from www.amazon.com, www.bn.com and http://strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/WhereThereIsNoComfort.html

Author site:   www.julianntroi.com

Author blog:  http://julianntroi.aegauthorblogs.com/