Purses for Promises

Promises for a better life, promises for a future, promises that never again will she have to endure the life she has come from.

This week while we have been here in the wonderful country of Cambodia we have visited many places and met many people. Our purpose here is to observe, learn and try to process all that we have seen in order to make a plan for future teams to come back.

One of the organizations we visited works to rehabilitate women who have been trafficked. We heard an amazing story about one woman that I want to share with you.

A woman was sold into trafficking by her family because they were lead to believe that she was going to go into a better city and work for a family as a house keeper or cook. Her family was tricked and she was sold into prostitution.

Once her family found out what really happened they began to look for her. After many years of being trafficked, she was arrested for having a fake passport. Once she was taken into custody, she began a long journey of trying to prove her real identity. Because she had been trafficked across many different city borders no one knew where she had really come from and she had no proof. She was put in jail.

During her time in jail her family and several organizations were looking for her. She was finally found and then began the long process of her family trying to prove her identity {there is no such thing as a social security card or birth certificate here for the poor, her family had to go to their village and have the elders in the village say they knew her and she lived there, they guaranteed their word with their thumb prints}. While she waited in jail for her family to gather the resources necessary to prove who she is she learned how to make purses.

When she was finally released from jail she joined the above organization for a time of restoration and healing. While she lived in the home she was able to teach her trade to other women. Those women made these purses!








































They are made from really hard strips of plastic. They are extremely well made and will probably last your entire life time and maybe even your child's, they are so sturdy!

I bought the ones above and would like to offer them to you. I would like to sell them to you and then send the money back to the women.

Each woman in the shelter is given a salary comparable to the wage she would make in a brothel or karaoke bar {also like a brothel}. She is paid because she produces wonderful goods like the purses above. I also bought aprons, cards and wallets. They are all handmade by these amazing women.

Will you join me in helping these women? Will you buy one of these purses and help these women achieve a better life?

If you are interested in one of the purses just comment here or email me at mckennah1972@gmail.com. I am open to any price but of course will sell it to the person with the highest "bid".

How amazing is it to be a part of changing a woman's life?

Cambodian Hope Organization

Tonight we had a chance to visit with CHO ~ the main organization we are considering partnering with ~ and learn a little bit about what they are about and why they do what they do. Did you know that Cambodia is only about 1% Christian? Please pray for this small team of people who are trying to rebuild Cambodia after the devastating Khmer Rouge.

They are doing amazing things here from a Safe House for Children who have been trafficked or are orphaned to School on a Mat. They want every child to have a chance at an education, even those whose families cannot afford the $20 per year that it takes to send a child to school.

Spend some time on their website and be praying for them. They are doing great things here, but there is a very very long way to go.

What is Working?

So today, I, Erin, had the privileged of hearing a man named Dan Heath speak about his new book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.

Instead of talking about finding what is not working and trying to change that, he talks about finding what is working and going with that idea and trying to emulate that to make the things that aren't working work. That's clear as mud right?

I know I don't do justice to explaining how it he did, but he did give us a story that I will share with you to hopefully help it make sense.

He told us about a man named Jerry Sternin, an American, who was given the responsibility of making a change in the malnutrition of Vietnam children in 6 months. So rather than find things that aren't working and trying to change that he instead interviewed moms to find children that are healthy and to find out why those children who live in the same country with the same resources seem to be surviving (and sometimes thiriving) when others are dying. You can read a more detailed and eloquent version of this story here.

But the point I took away from this was; in the world of human trafficking where can we find systems or cities when things are working, where children are not being stolen or sold? Where people value the life of another as equal to themselves. Where women and children are loved and cared for and respected and protected by the men in their lives and the men around them.

Where is it already working, where is human trafficking already NOT happening and why is that? What makes one mom willing to sell her child and another mom willing to anything, including die, for her child? What makes one man willing to have sex with a girl 5 years of age and what makes one man willing to protect that young girl to the point of killing for her?

I think there is something to be said for this model from Jerry. Find whats working and emulate that, share it with the commnity and maybe just maybe it would have the same results that Jeffy had, from one small community to now influencing tens of thousands of children in 20 countries!