success stories

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Here are some of the wonderful things Global Rescue Relief is able to accomplish with your support:

• Our Rescue and Relocation program combines community outreach, victim rescue, and survivor relocation through collaborative efforts to:  offer assistance to trafficking victims; rescue and relocate trafficking victims; seek trafficking tips; distribute rescue and hotline information; and dispense food and water.    

• Our Professionals Giving Network program actively solicits pro bono medical and social services to assist in the rehabilitation of victims of human trafficking.  Our Network of healthcare providers, mental health workers, dentists, social workers, counselors, and translators are critical to the success of our Victim Assistance program.  Through these invaluable services provided by dedicated and generous professionals, trafficking survivors are better able to resume healthier more rewarding lives.  

 
ANTI-HUMAN TRAFFICKING STORIES OF SURVIVAL AND SUCCESS

 

In 2011, Global Rescue Relief was pleased to announce the launch of our Freedom Packs program.  Freedom Packs, comprised of new clothing and toiletries, food and water, are Packs supplied to law enforcement.  These Packs, in turn, are provided to recently rescued trafficking survivors and are vital in contributing to the initial step of creating a safe and secure environment for these innocents.  In the early months of this year, we have been able to offer law enforcement over two dozen Freedom Packs.  Our goal is to provide another 75 by year's end. 

 

Global Rescue Relief was also excited to recently collaborate with a Michigan non-profit in restoring a labor trafficking victim from Africa (who we’ll call Makeda). Makeda is a young female, brought to the United States through fraud, and subjected to inhumane servitude. She spoke no English and had no family or friends in America. Yet one night, she bravely escaped her captors and found refuge. Being deprived of her freedom, she was in immediate need of medical and social services. We were promptly contacted to assist in her rehabilitation and restoration. Today, Makeda is beginning her life again and enjoying precious freedom. She is receiving medical, dental, and eye care along with life-skills development. She is also working closely with law enforcement to capture and prosecute her traffickers.

 

                                      

 

Sina Vann, a Vietnamese woman, was trafficked into the sex trade in Cambodia at the age of thirteen.  After being rescued by the Somaly Mam Foundation, and with their loving help, she began to heal and restart her life as a free woman.  She is now in school and working at the Foundation speaking against slavery and degradation throughout the world.

    

In Pakistan, Veero and her family were enslaved in debt bondage to a local farmer.  After a daring escape, she staged a 72 hour sit-in at the police station to convince law enforcement to save the rest of her family from bonded labor.  Since then, Veero has succeeded in rescuing more than 700 other labor trafficking victims and has founded the Saath Saath Saharoo Society in Pakistan.

                                                   

Founder of Green Rural Development Organization, Ghulam Hyder has fought to free thousands slave laborers in Pakistan.  Since 1997, Ghulam has mobilized people throughout the country against inhumane treatment and trafficking.  He has provided free residential plots, freed thousands of slaves and their families, and organized conferences and marches to promote anti-trafficking efforts. 

                                                                                                           

                                                                        

The most recent U.S. Department of State report on human trafficking in Israel recognizes its noticeable improvement in the anti-trafficking movement by boosting law enforcement efforts and providing critical protection and shelter to sex trade survivors.  In 2001, Israel made human trafficking illegal and later stiffened the penalties for traffickers.  The number of trafficking victims forced into Israel has declined from 3,000 sex slaves per year to several hundred annually. 

 

     

In 2008, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested key members of a human trafficking ring in Atlanta involving the sex trade.  After arrest, the main offender pleaded guilty to sex trafficking offenses involving a young Mexican woman.  He was guilty of luring a Mexican national into the United States through fraud then coercing her into prostitution through physical assaults.  His crime carries a mandatory minimum 15 year sentence.

                             

 

Both United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) work diligently to investigate and prosecute human traffickers in United States and throughout the world.  In 2007, the FBI launched 119 human trafficking investigations resulting in 155 arrests and 57 convictions.  Since 2005, ICE has opened hundreds of human trafficking investigations leading to as many arrests, the majority consisting of sex trafficking offenses.  ICE also actively investigates the sexual exploitation of children overseas.  Their Operation Predator initiative safeguards children from foreign national sex offenders, international sex tourists, internet child pornographers, and human traffickers and has produced around 10,000 arrests.  Additionally both the FBI and ICE strive to protect victims of trafficking and restore them to free and healthy people through many victim assistance programs.  They also rely heavily on collaboration with non-governmental organizations, non-profits, and community organizations in their efforts to find traffickers and restore trafficking victims.

Because of generous and vigilant people like you, slaves are rescued and freed while traffickers are punished.  Through your efforts, love, and compassion, victims are transformed into survivors.  Because of you, these beautiful and innocent men, women, and children have healthy lives with hopeful futures.