Women & Children Advocacy Centre Associate Update
www.wcacentre.org
November 2009

Miranda Tollenaar – Girl Alert

Recently I was able to add a new dimension to the meaning ‘Justice Has A Face’, which also happened to be the name of a workshop I attended last February, held by YWAM’s Women & Children’s Advocacy Centre.

A few weeks ago I was given the possibility to attend a high profile court session in the Dutch town of Zwolle where a gang of suspected human traffickers were being tried. Over the last years I have heard much information regarding human trafficking, but I knew it would become much more of a personal story to me if I saw the faces and learnt the names of those involved this case.

It turned out to be quite a big case, with ten male suspects and one female, mostly all of them Nigerians. I learnt that the case had resulted from a Nigerian pastor (living in The Netherlands) breaking the voodoo curses that had caused the trafficked girls to remain silent. Ten out of fifty girls that the police had been able to track down, had allegedly been smuggled from several Dutch asylum seeker centers and been forced by their traffickers into the sex industry. After pastor Moses Alagbe prayed with them, nearly all of these young women opened up to him about what had happened; something the police had not been able to accomplish thus far.
As the several witnesses were heard I thought about another trial in an entirely different part of world, Brazil, which had originally inspired my interest for human rights. In 2008, like Pastor Moses, some Christians, among them many YWAM’ers, played a crucial role on behalf of a group that didn’t have the means to speak up for themselves – indigenous children. I heard about case during a time when I was wondering how God would ever be able use my diverse interests and talents. As I started to help out by presenting this story to some Dutch news programs, for the first time ever, I realized that both my social studies and my job as an assistant TV producer were not such a bad combination after all.

It has been quite a journey since. And, now, almost two years later, I feel greatly privileged to announce the official launch of ‘Girl Alert’ at the YWAM Heidebeek base in the Netherlands on November 20th, 2009 – the 50th anniversary of World’s Children Day. Together as a growing team, we will be starting an initiative that will empower the voice of girls around the world. The first topic we are eager to promote is equal access for boys and girls to primary schools. This ties in with two of the Millennium Development Goals initiated by the United Nations. To accomplish this, we are working closely with eight primary schools facilitated by YWAM in Tanzania, Zambia, Mali and India, all located in areas monitored by the UN due to a literacy gender inequality of 10 % or more. I don’t think it will come as a surprise that providing education is considered a crucial part in preventing girls from being trafficked.

Will you pray with us as we pioneer this new project and will you join us by signing up your name on our site – www.girlalert.org ? Together we can be the change!