Dressember 2018

   A new year has come and December has come to a close.  Or in my case Dressember!  Did you know that there are estimated to be forty million slaves in the world TODAY?  Wow!  That's the population of New York City, Los Angeles, London, Chicago, Toronto, Bangkok, Houston, and Sydney COMBINED!  There are more people living in slavery today than at any other time in history.  The term for modern day slavery is Human Trafficking and many people have come together this Dressember to help END IT.  Human Trafficking is estimated to bring in $150 billion dollars annually and ten billion of that is estimated to be in the United States alone.  If you combine the earnings from Facebook, Disney, Google, Microsoft, and Apple you wouldn't even scratch the surface of that number.  That makes Human Trafficking the second largest criminal enterprise.  Every thirty seconds another person becomes a victim of human trafficking.  Seventy one percent of these are women and girls.  Even though human trafficking also impacts men, the majority of slaves today are women and girls where most are forced into marriage, sex slavery, or forced labor.  One fourth of modern day slaves are children.  This is WRONG!  And I believe that we can help change these statistics until all are free.  But what can I do?  What can you do?  All of these numbers and facts make it seem as if there is nothing that little old me can do to change the course of modern day slavery.  But there is!  This is why I participated in Dressember.  What is Dressember you may ask?  Well let me tell you.  It is committing to wearing a dress (or a tie if you're a guy(hey that rhymed!:P)) every day of December.  You're probably thinking, "How does a dress help?"  This is how: spreading awareness is step number one.  If no one knew about modern day slavery then no one could do anything about it.  So by wearing a dress every day you're bound to get questions asked.  "Why are you wearing a dress?"  And you reply by telling them about human trafficking.  You can post on social media, tell people in person, call, text, have others spread the word, anything to help spread awareness.  And that's not all.  At dressember2018.org you can donate or make your own free campaign page where people who want to sponsor you can donate to your page.  All of the money raised, Dressember puts towards rescuing people trapped in human trafficking and providing aftercare for them.  Dressember has raised over $5 million dollars since 2013!  And this year their goal is $3 million.  I believe with YOUR help we can reach that goal.  To donate go to dressember2018.org or go to their Instagram page and click the link in their bio.  EVERY dollar counts.  And you can even consider participating in Dressember!  I've known some people who have done it for a few years but I wasn't sure I could do it.  After all, committing to wearing a dress every single day for thirty-one days is a challenge!  Especially in winter!  But compared to what those forty million people who are trapped in human trafficking are going through it's a piece of cake.  So this year, along with some other friends, I decided to dive in and do it.  It went pretty well and you really CAN do anything in a dress!  Of course, I'm so glad to be back in my jeans today. ;)

  I wanted to share a little about why I felt drawn to the cause of Dressember.  Ever since I was little and became a bookworm I've LOVED any book that had anything to do with The Underground Railroad.  My favorite was the series by Lois Walfrid Johnson called "Freedom Seekers."  SO GOOD!  Reading the stories about the people who escaped their brutal lives as slaves, I always wished I had been alive then.  I would've been an abolitionist and been a part of The Underground Railroad.  I would've hidden slaves in my home and helped them escape to a better life; the life they should've been living all along.  But I didn't live then so I contented myself with reading books and imagining that I lived then... until I found out that slavery still exists; even in the United States!  And the fact that there are more slaves today than at any other time in history really caught my attention.  It is heartbreaking what is still going on and that not many people know about it or they know about it but think, "This wouldn't ever happen around here."  Well let me tell you that Human Trafficking happens everywhere.  We are called to stand up and raise our voices to stop these injustices.  In Proverbs 31:8 it says, "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute."  I want to do just that.  The people trapped in Human Trafficking may not be able to speak up but I can.  We have been blessed with the gift of technology and a lot of the time it is not used right.  By using social media to help spread awareness and raise our voices we can make a stand against modern day slavery.  But still yet, I am just one person.  What can I do?  When I heard about Dressember it really got me excited that I could do something!  When Blythe Hill thought up the idea of Dressember she probably didn't realize just how big it would get.  But I'm glad she still did it.  She didn't let the thought that, "Human Trafficking is just too big of a problem to solve" stop her.  And I'm not going to let it stop me.  What about you?

The Dressember campaign continues through January which is National Human Trafficking Awareness month.  And when January ends it doesn't mean we stop either.  Our job is to keep fighting for what is right, to end what is wrong.  Let's raise our voices for the voiceless, let's fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.

"Let it not be said that I was silent when they needed me." -William Wilberforce

"Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering." Hebrews 13:3