'Give up Your Friday Night' - A New Way to Help Trafficking Victims

It's a simple concept with potentially huge dividends: give up your Friday night dinner out/movie/shopping and donate what you would have spent to rescue a young girl from the brutal sex industry.

It's the brainchild of World Help, a Virginia-based Christian humanitarian organization that works to rescue girls and women who are enslaved or vulnerable to the sex industry.

World Help provides the girls with a safe home where they can receive an education, learn a trade and hear the Gospel. World Help Vice President Noel Yeatts told CBN News, "they're able to hear about a God who loves them just as they are --but one who has a much better plan for their life."

World Help works with girls and women from the low-caste Banchara tribe in India which has a 500-year tradition that entraps families in trafficking. The tradition forces the oldest daughter of each family, often as young as 12, into prostitution.  It teachers these girls that they must provide for their family's needs and pay for their brothers' dowries.  With no education and the reinforcement from cultural beliefs, the girls have no means of escape.

The crisis, of course, extends beyond India and Thailand, where World Help also works. Experts consider human trafficking to be a multi-billion dollar global enterprise that enslaves more than 20 million people.

Yeatts says it's easy to get bogged down by the staggering statistics but said she finds hope in being able to break the cycle each time a victim receives help.  "When we rescue just one young woman and give her freedom we are ending the vicious cycle for years to come," she said, noting that the woman's daughter, grand-daughter and future generations stand an excellent chance of not facing the same horrors that she did.