After a late night exploring Chicago, our Bear Breaks gang met for breakfast and to pack lunch at 7am. After so much time spent on our own concerns, it was time to remember why we came. Our first service event was at New Life’s Dream Center.
New Life is a church that helps with mostly victims of sex trafficking, but also men seeking a new start and children seeking their first start. New Life believes that they must reach out and offer help, not just rely on people to come on their own. When they do meet people who want help, they offer to take them away to a farm three hours away and provide whatever care that is needed.
The issue of sex trafficking has barely received any attention while remaining one of the largest problems in the world. With Chicago’s larger poverty and homeless rate (the theme behind our trip), it is subject to more trafficking beginning with girls in their teens. The idea of how the Super Bowl is where the most trafficking occurs in our country was brought up, and luckily New Life goes there each year to provide their services as well.
Many of the victims had no one to guide them in life, which is where New Life wants to step in and fill that gap. One of the main parts of their program is mentoring and providing the role models to those in need. A mentor can help transition to a new life and help them keep away from turning back to the drugs, alcohol and the streets. Even when the women begin to be established, the program keeps in contact to ensure the women don’t fall back where they had adjusted to so early on.
Our service to New Life was in a few ways. Some transferred items from one building to another, some painted the walls, and then a few were in charge of deconstructing a room. As a growing nonprofit in Chicago, New Life has expanded to a new building. After a few hours of service, the walls were well painted, a room was almost completely gone, and many items were transferred. My job was demolishing the room. We used crowbars to take out a wall and most of the ceiling. Marisol, New Life’s passionate leader, was astonished by how much we accomplished. It was also the first time a group painted where they were not expecting to have to redo it. Marisol was so appreciative due to the fact she commits to New Life from 7am to 1am everyday. While we helped, she said she was able to catch up on her emails and be back on track.
After we finished, Marisol took us on a tour around their “campus.” She showed us the church, houses for children and women, and a recently purchased house meant to help younger boys with the hopes of making the attached garage a body shop. This way the boys could learn to work and stay away from the several dangers that can come from being on the streets of Chicago.
Although our service was a very surface level contribution where we were unable to interact with those who will be affected, the tour helped show us why our service mattered. We helped knowing we were supporting a nonprofit. After the tour, we learned we were supporting a church that provides mentoring and programs for several different groups of people in need in an area that needs it most.
Looking ahead, Springfield and my hometown of Saint Louis home other organizations with similar causes on sex trafficking. Now that I have learned about what organizations can offer these victims, I plan on attending meetings and serving for those organizations that are focused on sex trafficking. I also plan on spreading awareness for the cause. If more people begin to notice the problem and support ending the issue, sex trafficking may gain enough attention to be a problem of the past.
-Seamus Shannon