From episode: Joining Hands Against Child Trafficking: How You Can Help Destiny Rescue's Mission
name is Andi Swann. I am the director of strategic partnerships for an organization called Destiny Rescue USA and we are a global anti - trafficking Christian organization. We exist to rescue children from human trafficking and sexual exploitation and help them stay free. So we are a both and organization. We do both the rescue and the recovery efforts to make sure that whatever vulnerability led to them being trafficked and entrapped that they don't fall into that same area again. Wow that is such such a wonderful thing. When I first heard about the organization I said I have got to find out about this and reach out and I was so pleased when you answered my email and said yes I'd love to come on the podcast. Now how did you get started with the organization? So I'm coming up on my one -year anniversary with Destiny Rescue. I have been in the nonprofit sector my entire career so coming up on 20 years and I just always cared about vulnerable kids but this is the fulfillment of a calling that the Lord placed in my heart 15 years ago. I went on a short -term mission trip with my church to northern Thailand in 2007 and again in 2008 and we were assisting full -time missionaries that were in that in that area and we would work with them during the day with children and then we'd go out into the night markets at night but we spent a couple of days in the hill villages and I grew up in the deep south. There's not a tremendous amount of diversity in the community that I grew up in so it was really eye -opening for me just the deep levels of generational poverty. I mean just barely their basic needs being met food, clothing, shelter especially food and shelter and so to see children playing without shoes without food and so the missionaries that served in that area talked about how grim the outcome was for these children especially if they were little girls that at the age of seven or eight that that's old enough to where parents say we can't provide for you anymore you're going to have to earn an income yourself so at that age they would either start picking rice or picking tea leaves and if they couldn't work fast enough they would be replaced and then sent to the city to get work and if a little girl at age eight is sent to the city for work she has no marketable skills most children in that area don't even speak the main language because they are a tribe so they don't speak Thai they don't speak English they speak a tribal dialect so they are taken advantage of and a lot of times forced into the commercial sex industry where they will never escape and I had recently graduated from college I had just bought my first home and so I had a secondary education and I owned property which was something that those little girls had no hope of ever accomplishing unless somebody intervened and it broke my heart broke my heart in a million pieces and I just told the Lord however you want to use me to affect change on this I will leave me I'll go
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