March Newsletter

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged,..

When I hear the daily news, I feel overwhelmed. Discouraged. Wars. Famine. Physical disasters. And then I think about the trauma the women we serve have endured. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed.

What can I, or you, do to change anything?

We have a unique opportunity before us, friends. We have the privilege of equipping the “frontline” who recover trafficking victims. Never in our history have we had so many Hope Bags requested by our law enforcement partners this early in the year.

At the rate we’re going, we’ll surpass the number of Bags shipped in all of last year by the end of March this year!

Why the great increase? Word is spreading from one law enforcement team to another. In California. Arizona. Colorado. And other locations. Professionals are being trained and need to be equipped.

Help us do something POSITIVE to address trafficking! Help us equip our partners so that when they locate a victim, they can immediately show them that they have worth. That their future can be dramatically different than their past. That someone cares.

We want survivors to know that they can “be strong, and courageous”.

Each Hope Bag contains about 30 items. That means to fill the current requests, we need our community to come alongside us with blankets, hoodies, athletic pants, t-shirts, underwear, sliders, stuffed animals, etc. – or our staff have to go shopping, which takes us away from our primary tasks. (There’s a link to the full list of needs below. We’re happy to provide you with gift-in-kind receipts!)

As I write this, we have volunteers here to assemble the Hope Bags. We couldn’t fill these requests without you all. Thank you.

Growth is a word whose meaning I’m understanding more each day.

Flowers are peeping through the ground, alerting us to spring. New growth.

I’ve already written about the growth in our Hope Bag program. We are growing in virtually every way in which we serve survivors.

Since we moved our office last summer, we’ve grown. Historically, the former average number of survivors we’ve worked with in a year was under15. Last year we worked with 46, plus 10 kids! Having the space to have staff members, to host survivors, to meet with mentors – it makes a difference!

We are blessed to have this space, and gladly share it with others. We invite you to join the Human Trafficking Task Force of Southern Colorado, which meets in our office the 2nd Tuesday each month, 5:45-7:15 pm.  

Blessings,

Sues Hess, Exec. Dir., and the RHope Team