Red Red Completely Red: Mercy Project: Rescuing Children from Slavery

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our friends, Chris and Stacey, started Mercy Project two years ago in order to help the estimated 7,000 children who work as slaves in the Ghana fishing industry. Some as young as 5 and 6 years old, the children work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. This month, though -- three weeks from now -- Mercy Project is all set to rescue the first group of children!

I’m unable to picture my children engaged in long, hard days of physical labor, eating one meal a day, and then falling asleep at night on a dirt floor filled with other slave children. Yet this is the daily reality for kids who have been trafficked into the fishing industry in Ghana, Africa. As with much of Africa, there is a great deal of poverty in Ghana. Unfortunately, this leaves many mothers in an unimaginable position: sell their children to someone who can take better care of them or watch them starve to death. Most of the mothers are told their children will be given food, housing, and an education. Instead, the kids are often taken to Lake Volta where they become child slaves and their mothers never see them again. Thankfully, Mercy Project is working to break the cycles of trafficking around Lake Volta by providing alternate, more efficient, sustainable, fishing methods for villagers – ultimately eliminating the need for child slaves. Because of the work Mercy Project is doing in Ghana, the first group of children will be freed this month from Lake Volta.

If you've got a minute, take a look at Mercy Project's 10 minute documentary, which shows beautifully the hope that Mercy Project is bringing to children and entire communities in Africa.