Love 146

Love146 is an organisation that work to eliminate child sex trafficking.

This is the story of how they got their name.

OUR NAME IS HER STORY



"The number pinned to her dress was 146..."



In 2002, the co-founders of Love 146 travelled to South East Asia on an exploratory trip to determine how they could serve in the fight against child sex trafficking. In one experience, a couple of our co-founders were taken undercover with investigators to a brothel, where they witnessed children being sold for sex. This was their experience. This is the story that changed our lives.


"We found ourselves standing shoulder to shoulder with predators in a small room, looking at little girls through a pane of glass. All of the girls wore red dresses with a number pinned to their dress for identification. They sat, blankly watching cartoons on TV. They were vacant, shells of what a child should be. There was no light in their eyes, no life left. Their light had been taken from them. These children...raped each night... seven, ten, fifteen times every night. They were so young. Thirteen, eleven… it was hard to tell. Sorrow covered their faces with nothingness. Except one girl. One girl who wouldn’t watch the cartoons. Her number was 146. She was looking beyond the glass. She was staring out at us, with a piercing gaze. There was still fight left in her eyes. There was still life left in this girl...

"...All of these emotions begin to wreck you. Break you. It is agony. It is aching. It is grief. It is sorrow. The reaction is intuitive, instinctive. It is visceral. It releases a wailing cry inside of you. It elicits gut-level indignation. It is unbearable. I remember wanting to break through the glass. To take her away from that place. To scoop up as many of them as I could into my arms. To take all of them away. I wanted to break through the glass to tell her to keep fighting. To not give up. To tell her that we were coming for her…"

“Because we went in as part of an ongoing, undercover investigation on this particular brothel, we were unable to immediately respond. Evidence had to be collected in order to bring about a raid, and eventually justice on those running the brothel. It is an immensely difficult problem when an immediate response cannot address an emergency. Some time later, there was a raid on this brothel and children were rescued. But the girl who wore #146 was no longer there. We do not know what happened to her, but we will never forget her. She changed the course of all of our lives." -Rob Morris, President and Co-founder

We have taken her number so that we remember why this all started. So that we must tell her story. It is a number that was pinned to one girl, but that represents the millions enslaved. We wear her number with honor, with sorrow, and with a growing hope. Her story can be a different one for so many more.



This is a video recently released by them which is definately worth a watch.

Corruption

At the moment in one of my modules we've been looking at the issue of corruption in Africa, with a specific focus on Kenya.


It has been shocking to see the amount of corruption in Kenya, it seems to be inherent in the culture and society.

Transparency International, an organisation that inquires into issues around corruption in states, ranked Kenya 154 with Somalia (the most corrupt) at 178 and Denmark (the least corrupt) at 1 in its 2010 Corruption Perception Index. 

This result shows the high level to which corruption is present in Kenya. 

There have been several 'big' scandals in Kenya in the recent years, and the violence around the 2008 elections seemed to have stemmed from issues surrounding corruption - specifically the corruption of the leaders. 

One thing that has been on my mind though is who is to blame for this?

Is it the fault of the people of Africa? 

Is it a 'natural' thing? 

I don't think so. 

After doing some reading on the topic, I am inclined to think that we, the West, are to blame. 

During the Colonial years (which were shockingly not that long ago!) we ruled African countries in a form that was bound to lead to corruption. In order to increase control over the countries we gave increased power to specific individuals, and financed them in a manner to do what we willed. 

This, in my opinion, increased a culture of bribery and elitism. 

When we abandoned the colonial countries, due to a lack of finance, we left them with a changed society that wasn't natural to their culture and wasn't complete - with institutions not built up properly, unable to withstand the years. We didn't leave the colonized countries in a position to continue the way we wanted them to; we changed the society, and abandoned it.

We shouldn't have colonized Africa in the first place, but if we were going to, we should have done so properly.