This post may upset you.
This post may inspire you.
This post may not even stir any sort of emotion in you, although, I sincerely doubt that.
I'd like to tell you a bit about a charity called Love 146.
This is the part where you will understand why I am telling you about the upsetting nature of this post.
It's about child slavery.
Child sex slavery to be specific.
And being from a society where children are free to be children, free to play, free to love, free to learn, we don't think that this sort of horrible act could POSSIBLY take place in the world.
But it does.
And it's common.
Go set a timer for a minute, on your iPod, computer, clock, egg timer, whatever, just go set it.
Done?
By the end of that little countdown, two children will have been sold into slavery.
That's 1.2 million children every single year that are trafficked.
Gang rape, pornography, sex tourism... what sort of a childhood is that?
Some of these kids don't even make it to adulthood, HIV and aids are common diseases, caused by forced, unprotected sex. And the 'lucky' ones who don't contract these type of diseases? They tend to suffer from severe psychological harm.
It's sick. It's sick and it's immoral but it's happening and we can't just deny that.
Sometimes, they hand out menus of the girls at Brothels.
You might be thinking "What sort of twisted person would use those Brothels?"
The answer?
Quite a lot... or else they wouldn't exist.
Sometimes the kids are sold to pay off debts.
Sometimes the kids are sold to allow their family to survive.
Sometimes the kids are willingly sell themselves to feed their family.
At any age, this is shocking, but at 8 years old? She shouldn't have to do that...
And Love 146 exists so she doesn't have to.
The name 146 comes from the first time the team visited Asia, trying to find ways to help the problem of sex trafficking.
They went under cover to a brothel and watched small children through a pane of glass, all watching cartoons joylessly. The feelings of joy and happiness had been flushed out of them. The meaning of Carefree was unknown. No-one took on their existence, apart from one...
She stared out at them, there was still life in her eyes, still fight left in her heart.
The number pinned to her chest was 146.
She had no name.
The team could do nothing to save her because they went to the Brothel whilst undercover so they could collect enough information on the Brothel so they could shut it down once and for all...
When that finally happened, the girl who wore the number 146 was no-where in sight.
What happened?
No-one knows.
But we wear her number in sorrow, with a silent and burning desire that we can end this intolerable cruelty once and for all.
Support the cause, re-tell her story, buy some of the merchandise, do something to help, because if we don't, who will?
