Blog Sugar 2011 supports LOVE146

Each Blog Sugar event, we select one amazing organization to support.

At Blog Sugar 11, we will be raising awareness for LOVE146.

Danielle Burkleo, from Take Heart, will be our LOVE146 representative on the evening of Blog Sugar.

I asked her to share her heart and passion for this amazing organization.

Here are her words:

"Love146 is a non profit organization that is working to end child sex slavery and exploitation through prevention and aftercare. Did you know that trafficking IS modern day slavery? Statistics state that 1.2 million children are trafficked each year, which means that two children are sold every single minute. How can we be quiet about this? I often times ask myself how this is even happening? It is so foreign from everything I know and take for granted, and the rawness of this organization grounds me and brings me back to a place that I need to be. The greatest need right now for children coming out of sex slavery is aftercare. These children need educated and trained adults to care for them after all of this horrific and repetitive sexual abuse has taken place. Love 146 is committed to training grassroots caregivers to meet these children's needs and provide safe homes for them.

Jesus has called us to care for those in need, He has called us to love the least of these. When I think of Love146, I think of Christ. I think of Him going into the most unlovely of situations and rescuing us. As I am learning more about this organization and preparing to start a Task Force here in the fall, someone shared this story with me. One of the pastors who serves full time for Love146 had been in South East Asia about two years ago. His heart broke as he saw these precious children who had just moved into the safe home. They all were in such great need but, his eyes kept going back to this one young girl. She sat in the corner, alone, and was rubbing mud and dirt all over herself, through her hair, on her face, all over her body. He asked the caregiver what she was doing. She said this little girl knew was dirty and wanted to make herself look dirty, just like all the dirty things that had been done to her. He couldn't stop thinking about and praying for this little girl and her story, and her future. Two years later, upon returning to Asia this pastor was greeted by this bright, beautiful, smiling face when he entered the safe home. A little girl that was so full of life. She kept asking him, this western white man -- who was once probably all she knew of evil, to dance with her. He happily danced around the room of that safe home with her. Later on the caregiver took him aside and said, you know who that little girl was right? He shook his head. She said that is the girl with the mud, the girl who saw herself as just a dirty, used child.

That right there is why I am passionate about this.

That right there has my heart.

Love 146 is making the steps to change these children's lives around. One life at a time. Our name is her story."

"Justice at it's best is love correcting everything that stands against love." - Martin Luther King Jr.