This will possibly be the only "intelligent" article I will write on Odyssey. Personally, I am not one for learning, especially in my free time. I like to separate my school and free time, have a nice balance between the 7 hours I spend in school and the other 17 for things like showering, dance, sleeping, you get the point.

However, this is something very important.

Human Trafficking, by definition from the website for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is: "the illegal movement of people, typically for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation." I will be honest with you, when I think of human trafficking, I will usually think of out the country places like Africa or Asia. I have never once thought of having such a terrible problem affecting us so close to home. In 1997-2010, 12 trafficking cases documented that sex trafficking is actively occurring in South Carolina. Out of those 12 cases, it was documented that 20 individual women were victims of this crime. In the last two years there have been 4 documented sex trafficking cases in South Carolina.

Internationally, The US is one of the top 3 destination countries for women and children to be sexually exploited. Please, just let that sink in. If you have a daughter, sister or just a girlfriend, imagine if she were a part of those statistics. Approximately 80% of sex trafficking victims are women and girls, and up to 50% are minors. In 2016 alone, 3,646 cases have been reported. Of that number, 3,058 were female, 433 were male, and 42 were gender minorities.

Upon hearing these statistics, my heart got more and more sad. Just the thought of anybody having to go through the hardships of something like that it is heartbreaking. At first, I thought that there was nothing I could do to help. But then I realized, I am a daughter of the One True King. I have the power of PRAYER. I have the powers of getting those high statistics out there, informing the people on all of my social media platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc) to gain support for different websites and organizations that are doing everything to help these victims out of situations like human trafficking and anything similar to it. I wanted to share some of the websites I found online, so if anybody wanted to read up and help in any way they could.

https://polarisproject.org/

http://www.prajwalaindia.com/home.html

http://www.urban-light.org/#home

http://www.goodweave.org/home.php

http://hopeforjustice.org/

Human trafficking is such a scary, cold and heartbreaking aspect of our world. One day, it will be nothing but a memory thanks to amazing volunteers and hopeful spirits. That is a day I am so excited to see.