For the past couple weeks, we've been working on an installation art project to raise awareness of human trafficking and the cycle of abuse. It's a structure that is about 6 by 6 meters in width and about 3 high. The viewer will enter the structure and walk through a tunnel that goes through the cycle starting with a young innocent girl (in this part we use video footage and picture from the high risk girls we worked with in Albania) then moves to abuse and devaluing, to show tha through this an the lose of sense worth they are trafficked or just enter the world of a working girl. In the center of the piece their story meets up with that of the man; the pimp, the John who buys...then we go backwards through his story and how different things in life harden him and take away the innocence that was once a young boy who loved women, loved his mother (so once again we show the footage of the young boys we worked with in Albania, who have the potential of becoming these men).
So this is the basics of it and we set it up tonight for the first time in Independence Square which is central Kyiv. We spoke to over 400 people tonight, and we're setting it up again tomorrow.
Before we set it up, we realized that a permit was probably needed. A couple people suggested to just try and do it without a permit because it takes 2-3 weeks to get a permit and we only started this a week ago so there was no way to get it in the amount of time. A few days ago a few team members stumbled upon city hall. Upon finding an english speaker they explain what we were doing and the lady who worked there said that if they wrote up a letter today, she would give us the permit the same day and we could set up our structure outside city hall with our van and everything! This is huge!!
Here we are, Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, a hotspot in Easter Europe for human trafficking and they've told us that we can do our awareness campaign right outside city hall!
So thank God for the favour we've found in city hall and keep us in your prayers
saturday and sunday when we put this up. Pray for good weather and receptiveness to what we're saying through this piece, and safety as we anticipate some very strong, maybe not so positive reactions.
The other project we're working on as a team is a documentary on human trafficking to bring home and pass around through different connections when we get home to raise awareness. We're using footage and the stories of the children in albania, many of who have siblings who have been trafficked, etc. We're using everything we're learning here through street interviews, interviews with different officials, we've been connected with IOM (international organization of migrations) and they've been helping us out and many other people. We've been going into hotels, clubs, disco's, casinio's and places of the sort to get first hand experience as well as footage for the documentary.
The main place we've found is a casino called the River Palace. It's a multi story boat that is on the river and on any given night you can go into the disco and find upwards of 150 working girls. It's such a hot spot and being there, it's clear that anyone there is either there to buy or to sell. We were there last friday and intending to go back this week but we've been so busy with the other project we haven't been in a couple days. (Oh and the other thing we've been doing is simple intercession. When we first got there, three team members sat on the docks and to intercede for these places as the team was inside. And one of them, out of the boldness of her heart would ask for impossible things, like that these places would be gone all together. Anyways, we got back last night and heard that the River Palace is now gone. Since we've been there a couple days ago, it's been raided, either by police or the mafia and now the boat has just up and disappeared. It's incredible! We can't even believe it.
So there you have it. That's what we've been up to.
If you can also keep the documentary in your prayers that we can get everything we need and that God will direct us in every part of this.
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