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Tag: Anti-human Trafficking

Fear Not the Slander and Shadow, but to Break the Silence – Interview with Indian Anti-Child Trafficking Activist

Banner image: Aashima Samuel, the National Director of EFIC@R, interviewed by CEDAR “In Indian villages, when we and church pastors advocated anti-child trafficking, some Hindi nationalists accused us of, or even attacked us for ‘brainwashing’ villagers to convert them into Christians. In fact, among them, there were traffickers slandering us to extinguish our anti-trafficking voice,” said Aashima Samuel, the National Director of Evangelical Fellowship of India Children At Risk (EFIC@R), CEDAR’s partner. Samuel experienced obstruction at the entry into villages, unreasonable accusations, being tailed many times, and not being helped by the police, and more. She has experienced all these at work. Although the risk of and resistance against anti-child trafficking ministry are gigantic, Samuel perseveres to break

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Engage Students in Issue of Global Poverty – a Primary School Teacher’s Vision

Banner image: Ms. Jade Lee, CEDAR’s working partner of education ministry in HK ‘How many human traffickers are there in the world at present?’ ‘Apart from Hong Kong, will CEDAR Fund be raising funds for poor children in other places?’ In January this year, CEDAR went to a school under the Direct Subsidy Scheme in Shek Kip Mei to give a talk, which so interested the Primary 5 students in the audience that they raised their hands and asked many questions afterwards. The topic of the talk was ‘Anti-human trafficking’. Our staff explained the definition of human trafficking, talked about how some children in Asia and Africa have been trafficked in the past and described how we can

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Education on Helping the Poor Starts from a Young Age: Interview with the Rev. Eugene Leung of E.F.C.C. Jachin Church

Written by: Edward Lai How many clothes do you have in your wardrobe? You probably don’t remember the exact number, and you’d probably say: “I don’t know.” The truth is possibly that there are numerous items. Like many people in Hong Kong, The Rev. Eugene Leung owns more clothes than he needs. When a staff from CEDAR raised the question at a church gathering, The Reverend, who was present, realised that he owned the most clothes. That said, isn’t it normal to own more than what you need? The Rev. Eugene Leung Eugene Leung said, “I’d never thought about whether I needed that many clothes. The way the fashion industry works these days is that when I’m replacing

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Uprooting Poverty: The Perspective of Christian Faith

Written by: Raymond Kwong (CEDAR’s Chief Executive) and Jady Sit In recent years, the international development sector began to emphasise the importance of human inner transformation for uprooting poverty. For instance, Cornell University Professor Kaushik Basu, who serves as the chief economist of World Bank from 2012 to 2016, shared in a public lecture, that no matter what kind of models of poverty alleviation is, one of the key factors to its success is whether people are willing to let go of some of their own interests or economic benefits and seek higher purposes, with which human being in general are common, and so, he advocates strengthening values education in society. This is about changing hearts and minds.

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‘Let’s Go Barefoot, NOW!’

Written by: Ethel Sha (Participant of CEDAR Barefoot Walk 2017) A year ago, the chief executive of CEDAR commenced the event by sending out this command. Everybody in the hall took off their shoes and got ready to step out of their comfort zones to walk around Tseung Kwan O barefoot. Since then, I have never bared my feet to walk in the city, but to learn and be aware of the issue of human trafficking with a “barefoot” spirit. My memories of the Barefoot Walk last year are still vivid. From the moment I “applied” to work as a domestic helper overseas, to “being exploited” in labour, I discovered that I would lose power over my life

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Divine Intervention in Broken Livest

Written by: Maylin Hartwick (Leader of Harmony Baptist Church) When one wants to reconcile with oneself, God’s intervention is indispensable as God transforms the life of a person. In the past few years, CEDAR has witnessed many encouraging testimonies of its partners. We saw how God healed the brokenness in the lives of the poor and exploited. Harmony Baptist Church (HBC) is a friend of CEDAR. Like CEDAR, HBC is active in mobilising local believers to care for refugees, asylum seekers, domestic workers, and victims of human trafficking here in Hong Kong. Maylin, a leader of HBC, is going to share with us stories of women they have served and how God has intervened in their lives. At Harmony Baptist Church,

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Human Trafficking

Author: Jojo Poon Martha (obscured) spent her early years with her mother who worked as a sex worker in the red-light district of Mumbai, India. “At the age of 16, my mother met a guy when she was in Nepal. He said he could refer her to work at better places in the cities, and she ended up being sold to work at the red-light district in Mumbai.” With the help of a generous woman from her hometown, Martha was spared from having to suffer the same fate as her mother’s. “Every one of us could fall prey to human traffickers with a tiny change of situation,” as expressed time and again by the frontline workers serving sex

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Joseph: Human Trafficking Survivor

Author: Roger Seth The Bible was written thousands of years ago but it has much to say about what we might see as a modern problem: human trafficking. We will look specifically at the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, chapters 37–50. Make sure you are familiar with the story before reading this reflection or discussing it with a group. Sold by relatives  Like so many victims of trafficking today, Joseph was sold by his own family. The fact that the Midianite caravan was ready to buy a slave to sell in Egypt (Genesis 37:26–28) tells us that the trade in people was already happening in the region at that time. Today, we are told, trafficking happens

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Children Are Priceless

Barla (obscured), 12, was a student in Pastor Thomas’ tutorial class. She missed classes a few times, and Pastor Thomas started searching for her to no avail. He feared for the worst that she might be caught by traffickers, so he filed a case at the police station. The investigators soon found out that Barla’s parents had sold her to a pimp at the price of less than HK$16. This is the story of one of the trafficked children told by CEDAR’s partner, EFIC@R, located in northern India where human trafficking is prevalent. EFIC@R started serving in the Jharkhand State, Orissa State, and West Bengal in 2012, establishing support networks with local churches to protect vulnerable children and

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This is Hong Kong

Author: Tsun Wan Yan It appears that Hong Kong has nothing to do with human trafficking, and our government did not sign the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking In Persons. In fact, Hong Kong is a port and destination of sold human commodities, and it has been placed on the Tier 2 watch list (same ranking as Afghanistan, Cuba, and Tunisia) for two consecutive years in the Trafficking in Persons Report by the U.S. Department of State. The ranking describes a country that is experiencing a significant increase in human trafficking victims, and that no tangible measures were established by the authorities. The Hong Kong government denies it has a human trafficking problem, but the Erwiana abuse case in

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