She Is Safe: How $2.90 a Week Stops Child Trafficking — A Partner Highlight with Michele Rickett (Ep. 7)

$2.90 a week. That's what it costs to keep a girl from being sold.

In the first episode of the new Partner Highlight series on ROI Ministry: The Don't Bury It Podcast, host Tim Barker sits down with Michele Rickett — Founder and CEO of She Is Safe, a survivor of childhood abuse who has spent the last 24 years building one of the most effective gospel-centered anti-trafficking ministries in the world.

In one of the most honest conversations about money and ministry you will hear this year, Michele walks through how She Is Safe keeps girls in high-risk communities safe for less than the cost of a venti latte a week — and how that work has cut trafficking in pilot villages by 85%. She shares the story of one woman sold at age 4 for a case of beer, the husband who later said "we don't allow that here anymore," and the men who ended up donating land, baking bricks, and building the school themselves. She also opens up about her own past, the forgiveness that set her free, and the moment she looked over a fence in Africa and saw a girl being sold — and heard God say: "What are you going to do for these children of mine?"

This is the first Partner Highlight — sit-downs with the leaders of the ministries on the ROI Ministry Top 10. If you have ever wondered what a vetted, gospel-centered, auditable, impact-per-dollar ministry actually looks like in practice — this is it.

She Is Safe served 100,502 women and girls in their last audited year. They are ready to scale from 11 countries to 14 — but not without partners.

To give directly: https://sheissafe.org/
To support the work through ROI Ministry's National Christian Foundation platform (no fees, no skim): https://roiministry.org/

Know you're making a difference.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most giving doesn't produce any lasting measurable fruit. Welcome to ROI Ministry, the Don't Bury It Podcasts, the show for Christians who measure what really matters. 30,000 times the eternal return on every dollar, every hour, every opportunity, so you know you're making a difference. Because good intentions aren't enough. Wise generosity changes everything. Let's get into it. So welcome today to our podcast episode seven, which I think you're going to be very excited to get to know Michelle and the ministry She Is Safe. They are one of our top ten ministries, and we're very excited to have them today. We looked for uh ministries in the human sex trafficking space for years and realized it was a very expensive, very timely endeavor. And there were a lot of act there was a lot of activity, but we were having a very hard time finding an organization that tracked their outcomes based upon dollars entrusted to their ministry. And so when we found She is Safe and discovered what they did and for the price that they did it per person, we were very excited. And so with that, Michelle, I'm gonna hand it over to you to tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, your faith background, and then we'll get into the uh to this episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Great. Well, thank you so much, uh Tim, and I'm so excited about the partnership with ROI and getting the message out. I'm I am just a lover of Jesus. He's done so much for me. I'm happy that I'll get to share a little bit of what he's done. Um at this stage of my life, I am a widow. My husband Daniel and I were missionaries for decades together, and so it's been a big adjustment after the last through the last four and a half years with his home going. But I found that what the Bible says is true, that God will move in to be the husband of the widow. And I meet with other widows and we all confess the same thing. Wow, the Lord draws near to us in our heartache. And so, in a way, we have a whole new life. My husband and I were together for so many years, we were teens when we married, so I'm discovering what it's like to just be a person alone with Jesus, and I can tell you he's done just a marvelous thing for me. I was not raised in a Christian home at all, quite the opposite. It was like my parents were at war with each other. We were little kids, we just didn't understand what was happening with all of their anger, and the police would show up at our house. I mean, we were that those neighbors, you know, it was everyone knew there was trouble, but they didn't exactly know the extent of it. So my dad was a pedophile. He had a very good job, he looked great every day. We lived in the nicest house in the neighborhood, but he had these demons and perpetrated them mostly against me but other girls as well. So when I told my mother I was about 12 years old, and uh she fled and left me there with my dad. And then things got much worse. And at a point, I shared a little something with a girlfriend at school, and she just said that he can't do that to you anymore. That's illegal. We're gonna get you out of there. And I thought, right, you know, my dad has a gun. He's threatened me and anybody who finds out about this. And she she so I swore her to secrecy, never tell anyone what I've just told you, or I'm gonna be murdered, you know. But she could not keep it inside. She told her mom. And so the following Monday when I went to school, the Department of Family and Children's Services was there here in Georgia, and I had a caseworker, and the counselor at school said, You're going home over my dead body. I mean, it was amazing what happened in such a short period of time. And then just fast forward, I married this wonderful guy who is from a beautiful Christian family, very normal, you know, Christian family, but they had a heart for missions and the gospel. And so it just won me to Christ. And, you know, it took it, it did take a little while. But once I received the Lord, all that he had to offer for me, boy, that new life began. And I just longed to help others who were going through horrible things, not just what I went through, but life is just hard, knocks us in the head, a lot of us, and most of us, I would say. But Jesus is up for all of that, and he wants to redeem all of that. So he uses us, the redeemed ones, to share that good news with others. So, so that's who I am. I am a person who's just so beholden to Jesus for what he's done for me, and he puts that in our hearts by his spirit to love others the way that he's loved on us. So what a joy, and it's energizing. You know, every single day I don't have to wonder what I'm gonna do with my time. I remain his servant now and forever.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Well, I so appreciate you sharing that. I didn't know you were gonna share all that, but I am I am so appreciative that you did because it just really lets us, the listeners, understand where you're coming from. And it truly God will use the sometimes the worst things in our life for his glory. And when I see that, I'm just so blown away. One of my favorite people at my local church, uh, her name's Elaine, and I shared her story in my book, Boom, What to Do When Life Blows Up Around You. And she was a victim of uh, and it was her brother, and for for many years, for many years, and she shared her story to our whole church, and I was just like, wow, what a hero she is to not only uh work through this pain, but to use her situation to help others. And and and I know this was a question later on, I'm just gonna get to it now because I didn't know if you would answer this question, and you already have. But in Elaine's story and maybe yours, it was and again, I I have three girls and a wife, so statistically, you know what that means. And it's it's very, very heartbreaking. And and the anger and the the hurt, I just can't imagine um being a victim of that, as I have so many friends and and family members that have unfortunately experienced something similar. And so, but what made Elaine such a hero to me is that she not only sought reconciliation, sought the Lord, uh, but forgiveness. Not that she you have to be buddies with someone you've forgiven, but for you and for you to then be able to give an an intimate marital relationship with her husband. Otherwise, she felt like if she hadn't, I don't know if this is similar to your situation, but if she hadn't been able to take that to God and let go of it, it would always be a burden in her marriage and and her ability to connect intimately with her husband. Does that resonate with you?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Is is that it sure does. I was so blessed. Um as a newlywed, I had a mentor in uh a church where we were members, and she just really encouraged me, you know, if you really want to grow in your faith, there's something you're gonna have to be able to do, and that is you're gonna need to forgive your perpetrators. So it's not only my dad, but my mother too. How how could she let this happen? You know, that sort of mentality. And I wrestled with that with her and with the Bible. I said, I'm sure it says in the Bible they have to ask for forgiveness. And she said, Well, that really has nothing to do with it. You need to give them back to God, pray for them, uh, to gain blessings and forgiveness. And you're the first to extend it to them. And I remember the crisis for me was, and she would hold me accountable. She would tell me things that were important to obey in the scriptures. And I tried, uh, but uh she would then the next time we would meet, she'd say, Well, how did that go? And so she assigned me to take a day. She said, just go ahead and write down every grievance that you have, and then take that next step and say, Lord, best as I can, I release these people to you. I ask you to bless them, help them to come to you, make sure that my heart is pure in that regard. And I didn't know if it had worked or not. I did what she said. I wrote forgiven across those pages and then burnt them. So they were gone forever. And uh, many years later, I got a phone call from a woman who said, This is your mother, and I'd like to come to visit you for the weekend, but I can't afford it. Would you send me a ticket? She came for the weekend and stayed seven months. She had no place else to go. And I had the chance to test it out. Had I really forgiven her? Because, you know, that was my opportunity either to get my pound of flesh or to, as someone had done for me, opened the door of the gospel to this woman. She asked me every day for seven months, how could you possibly forgive me? You know, she said, I just lost my mind and I ran away. I knew he was capable of anything and I had to get out of there. So she accepted Christ at my kitchen table. We started going to church together. I mean, what an amazing full circle on that wonderful redemption story. But it's this was kind of the ground of my discovery of human trafficking. And once we became missionaries on many fields, we were sent to several fields. I was seeing what was happening for women and girls. And I at that point, I was just done with my old story. I didn't like to talk about it. I was embarrassed. I thought, that's not, I'm a new creation. That's not me anymore. I am a Christ haller. I'm a missionary woman. And I remember looking over the fence and seeing a little girl I was trying out my best Swahili on her, and she blinked at me, and I thought, oh, I'm terrible at this. And the lady of the house came out and I said, I'm trying my Swahili and it's not working. Can you help? And she said, She'll never understand Swahili. She's a girl we bought from up country and she does all the cooking, cleaning, and babysitting, so my kids can't go to school. She was like 12. I could not believe what I was hearing. She said, Yes, and part of the arrangement is, you know, she's so blessed to be here in the big city. We'll arrange a marriage for her. And she said, so easy to find someone to marry these girls because they're always men who like the young ones. And that's when the arrow went right through my heart. It's as though God said, Look, you needed a rescue, and I gave you one. You needed a new identity and a family and a purpose. I've given you all of this. Now, what are you going to do for these children of mine? That was the devastating moment when I realized I had to get over myself, my embarrassment about the story, that I it was no longer I can hide this away. But Lord, the Lord was saying, I want to put this to good use. And he has ever since.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Wow. I am, as you can tell, I'm having a hard time keeping myself together here. I you know, I wrote a book on this, What to do in life blows up around you, because it appears that the things that take out, I wouldn't say most, but many people, if we can, if we can somehow give that to God, He can use it to provide a platform for us to help others. And so you just answered my next two questions. You know, the holy injustice behind how she is safe, how it got started, and when it got started. And it's just a beautiful story. And uh wow, I'm just so I'm so glad we we we we went into that before we started talking about your ministry, just so again, people can understand where you're coming from, where your heart is in this and your ability to really understand and connect with the people that you minister to. There'll never be a situation where someone will tell you, Hey, you you just can't understand, or you don't understand. That's just that's just out the door.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

So yeah, so where do you want to add a little bit more about when you got started and was so it was a it was a long journey from that time of you know, my face on the floor before the Lord, like I don't know how to help her. I don't know what to do, Lord. But if you'll show me what to do, I'll do it. Well, God takes that kind of prayer very seriously. So I'm still I we have two girls. They were one and three years old at that time. And so every time I would tuck them into bed, I would cry. For the girl next door, for all the girls next door and around the world who has who know no one is caring how they're gonna develop or how devastated they will be when an old man marries them and gives them wifely duties and the abuse of the losses that she will suffer. It was just so much for me that I in that kind of torment. I went to the lead elder of our church, his all African church, and uh Dr. Tehru was the elder, and I sat with him and told you what I just told him, or told him what I just told you all, and that I just did not know what to do, but I was willing. And he said, you know, every culture has its social evils and the mistreatment of women and girls, that's here, it's everywhere. And he said, But I have some advice for you. He said, I want you to realize that you go to a church full of African women who grew up in these environments and they have transcended through Christ, as you have. I think you should talk to them. The best advice I ever got, really, when it came to ministry. Those who have suffered under it and come through with Christ. So that became my quest. So we were assigned to there, we were to set up a base of operations to find the African Christian leader to take that role, which we did, and then my husband would be sent to other um countries to help us help our mission set uh partnerships with indigenous church planting efforts. So that was our sense that where God would have us. And wherever we went together, we went to the Middle East, we were in China, we were in India, we're in Indonesia, and my eyes had been open. It's like, oh my goodness, this is happening everywhere, and it's kind of normal. Um so I began interviewing women who, as Dr. Thraw had told me to do. So in all of these countries, and all this time, you know, garnering prayer support from people and churches in the US, supporting churches and friends. And it was galvanizing a lot of women who had suffered all kinds of things here in the U.S. And they said, Oh, we want to be advocates for those women and girls. So, as I was learning about these women and girls, one of the people who joined in to help launch She A Safe in 2002 was a prolific author, Kay Marshall Strong. And she traveled with me to do some more interviews. And she said, Michelle, we can get this published. And she made a few calls called Zondervan called Inner Varsity Press. IVP gave us a contract within a month and said, go get more and fresh stories. We want those. And that book, they said, now it's a missionary book, so don't quit your day job. Just don't get too excited. But we believe in it. So we'll we'll be in this project with you. And uh so we we did all of the interviews, we compiled the book. It's called Daughters of Hope, Stories of Witness and Courage, and it's the first hand accounts of these women. It's a very easy book to write because they really wrote it by telling us their stories. And then we asked them, what was it like to grow up here? How did you come to Christ? And what could we possibly do together for women and girls? We didn't care where anybody's from or who gets the credit, what could we do? They gave the very best answers. And so we submitted all to IVP. Um that book hit their bestseller list and retained it for four years. There was just so much curiosity, and you know, how how do these things happen and can people transcend? And is Christ up for this? And and things that we could do together. So that was my basically field research to understand where is this the most prevalent and what are the most effective things that we could do with our sisters who live there, who have become risen above through the power of Christ, and then begin to forge partnerships as as my husband and and we were doing with our mission, we could frame that up in a ministry that frees and equips women and girls who are least reached with the gospel, and in these notorious communities that where they just basically normalize the abuse and sale of women and girls. So that set the mission, that book, that research set the mission in 2002, which was twenty four twenty-four years ago.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

So so you and again, not to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like young girls are most vulnerable in areas of extreme poverty. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 17:35

And it's not only poverty, many of the places we work have extreme poverty or their situations of extreme poverty, like refugee camps. So of course, everyone there is poor. But the highest prevalence for human trafficking, that means a percent of population, is throughout the Middle East. And these can be very wealthy countries, but they for instance, last year Iran lowered the age of marriage ability of a girl to nine years old. It's written into law. They're not doing that because they're poor, it's because of this pedophilia that men want very young brides that they can control and you know, but it is a recognized form of human trafficking. There are one million girls given or sold to a man every single month. That's about 12 million a year, or one every three seconds. So, and very few people talk about the trafficking of girls into a forced marriage. And her life is over. I mean, it it's done. She know she is generally taken out of school. She has this crushing physical weight upon her of this man who's old and she has to have these wifely duties. She doesn't even understand her own body. She will generally, she suffers most in childbirth because she's too young. And I rarely connect this, but there is a female genital mutilation that happens in these contexts. And it's basically so that a girl is cut so that she will have no pleasure and often stitched almost closed, and then sold into a child marriage and may give birth. And I mean the consequences of that, there's there are fistula, which means a leaking of from the bowel. And uh, you know, we've heard of girls who are basically living in an outhouse and their husbands free to get another wife. You know, he can have several if he can support them. But the it's hard to describe the evil perpetrated against women and girls in a way that we we think, well, women and girls, they're coming up in the world everywhere. You know, surely things are getting better. But in some communities, we call them high-risk communities. They're least reached with the gospel, and women and girls are treated like a commodity, something that can be used or sold.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

So these are least reached areas and they're predominantly Muslim, Hindu? Is there a particular one religion that's worse than the other?

SPEAKER_00 20:16

For yeah, I would say under Islam is and it's because of the example of Muhammad who married a nine-year-old, that and that's the justification. Well, if our leader did that, you know, and that's you know, it's great to talk to women who grew up in that environment and say, yeah, well, look at our leader. You know, how did Jesus treat women and girls? And I'm telling you, they are stunned that he stood up for a woman who was caught in the act of adultery, or had discourse with the shameful woman at the well, or stepped in for the widow whose son had died and raised him to life. That's that's the leader we want to follow. He is full of grace and the power to change everything in one's life. So women have never heard such great news that really they are made in the image of God, they are dear to him. He has gifted them with things that their family and community need, and that's what they can use to forge a path forward. And we'll find out what that giftedness is, create a business around it of some kind that they can engage, and then they have alternatives to either being sold themselves or selling their own daughters.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Yeah, you had shared with me that there's over 40 to 50 million trafficked women in the world, and uh over 80% are little girls. And it's just just heartbreaking with three girls myself. Do you also see that as a nation, I assume, turns their back on Jesus, uh, thinking of our own nation in America? Look at the I assume what Tim Tebow is dealing with, his foundation is really the gateway to this, right? Ponography and and some of the things that uh some of the stories that he shares. Do you see that as they turn away from Christ? The the the the you know this heinous crime towards this violence towards girls increases and and conversely, I'm assuming or hoping the opposite's true?

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Well, y yes. Any culture that descends into perversion and you know organized crime is involved is going to become much more dangerous, not only for girls, it is predominantly, and the the 40 to 50 million are all the slaves in the world. 98 of those who are who are trafficked are outside of the United States. But it's, you know, we in a way our country talks out of both sides of our mouth when it comes to human trafficking. We say, oh, that's so terrible. It's happening in our own backyard. But we're giving everything that we're gonna sell, we're gonna use sex to sell it. We're going to even normalize sex on television and all kinds of perversion. We're gonna celebrate that. And you can't do both. We really cannot. We're we're creating toxicity on the one hand, and then of course giving our children cell phones, smartphones, that they can, you know, go on the internet, and that's just a window for these pedophiles to crawl through. And uh yeah, so I'm I'm so grateful for Tim Tebow shining the light on the internet's um exploitation of children. Um and of course, on the other side, you know, it that's a lot of darkness, but it only takes one light to light up a whole room. So, you know, our encouragement is let's let's do everything that we possibly can to keep kids safe, boys and girls, near and far. And here in the United States, she is safe. Most of our programs are in these least reached countries, but when we're here in the US, she is safe, teaches about tips for safety for kids, for children and for teens. We do a little workshop on that and get people a take-home bookmark. And it's a conversation starter for their the adults in their life. To this has to be an ongoing conversation because traffickers and pedophiles are always innovating to do more of their sinister work. But um, I remind us that God is bigger than that, but it does mean he's calling on his people to be engaged. He always has. I have wonderful scripture that he's you know led us to to just embrace so fully and share so freely um about the call to advocacy from every every person who can.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

That's great. What where do you predominantly operate? Is there potenti particular nations or areas? And tell us a little bit about that and why you focus on those areas.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Yeah, thank you. Well, yes, we we work at the intersection of least reached people groups because what we find is where that godless mindset is pervasive is where women and girls suffer the most, where there's the highest prevalence or the busiest human trafficking corridors. So North Africa, the Middle East, all those countries there, we're in four Middle Eastern countries, poised to grow to 14 in the next couple of years. We just have local indigenous Arab Christian women who are so eager to roll out the Shia safe program with their neighbors, and we've tested it with them. So it's tremendously effective and very low cost. But also throughout Asia, the busiest human trafficking corridor in the world is between North India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, that whole area. It's open borders. And in North India, they're brothels the size of a city. We're talking about 30,000 sex slaves, and the average when a girl begins is 11. And she would generally only survive about seven years. So that's what you call high risk. You know, you'll hear this sometimes when people are excited about doing something for human trafficking, that anyone can be trafficked. And that's true. Any man, any boy, any woman, any girl can be trafficked. But who is most likely to be trafficked? We have the statistics now, not just my field research, but the State Department does the trafficking in persons report that tells us about the flow, the trafficking of people, and all of the statistics and all the recommendations are there for us to kind of tap into. So we create long-term partnerships in these high-risk communities. So we're talking about red light districts, refugee camps, border crossings, and those border communities, and then source communities. There are unbelievably source communities that every girl who turns 13 is sold to one of the brothels of North India to help the family. And she has no idea what awaits her. But a dad, an uncle, or a neighbor will take her after her 13th birthday and basically get her into a brothel. And the family is generally paid about $50 a month as long as she survives. And the women just shrug their shoulders like that's how we got here. And you know, what can we possibly do? We're voiceless. And we say, Well, we have helped some women like you create a small business, something that your community needs as an alternative to selling your daughters. Would you like to try that out? And uh wow, you start with maybe 200 families, only about 10 of them say, Well, okay, we'll try, you know. But everybody else is watching. So we tell them, you are an ambassador for this program. You've got to make those goats healthy, or you have to make the most beautiful carpets that are for sale. And Jesus is with you. He's had his eye on your village all along. That's why he gave you those girls so that he could bless you through them and you've sold them away. Try keeping them and submit yourself to God's way and watch what will happen. So I'm so excited. We've seen villages where we have reduced human trafficking by 85%. There's now a school, it's no longer normalized to sell girls, no more girls going after their birthday down to North India. Instead, they're in school, they're learning to run microbusinesses, even if they cannot read or write. They're teens, they can run a successful business. So it's not a complicated business. They usually join with a thumbprint, and over time they gain literacy and business skill that we've been able to reduce down into their language and to contextualize for the thanks to the local coworkers that we have there. They help us to to make it fit any different sort of community. So even in a refugee camp, there is a c there is an economy. And often you put yourself, there's so much up upheaval in the Middle East now. These women, often men are killed. The dads are killed. So it's a a widow and her orphan children run for their lives and they hear about a safe place, uh, which a refugee camp, and they get there into a move into a plastic tent, and uh other women warn them, then there are men who wander these camps and offer money for your teen girls. Just keep them in. Keep them in the tent. But we have co-workers who are right there every day in the camps. We get there before the traffickers and say, Hey, we have a girls program, and she can come every day, and no men are gonna be in there, and she's going to discover her giftedness and how much God loves her and what he wants to do with her life. I mean, any kind of wretched environment, God is very present.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

So you talked about two particular areas, and I didn't want to stop you because I'm just so blown away. It's like you're charging hell with with with with with God's word and grace and mercy, and uh it's just, I mean, hero status for anyone who's listening for me and and and anyone who hears this. And so I just want to back up to the the two things that you talked about, the village approach, which is great. And you would start small, you would have the example, people would see it. I kind of think of compassion ministry. When a child gets a compassion ministry sponsor, most people don't realize that the rest of the family's like, wow, you just won the lottery, and and they're on the sidelines. And I'm assuming it's kind of like the same thing eventually. Maybe uh initially it's what is this? But then after it starts to pick up some steam, and and people are looking at this as wow, and then at a point you've you've crossed over that halfway point where now you've you've moved the needle. You've you've not only dealt with the the root cause, you're you're reaching the women, you also shared with me previously, maybe you could add a little bit about how you're also getting the men that were are involved in these incredible this incredibly evil act to acknowledge that, hey, this is wrong. And and they're coming around, and some of them are you have become your advocates. Could you share a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yeah, it's uh so wonderful to watch. One of the things, of course, we so we gather the women in weekly groups, so that 12 to 20 women in a community, so they know each other, and there's generally a known Christian woman to them, who's the person that we basically train, send, equip, deploy, partner with for the long term. And uh so that person is there every single week, meeting with these women, introducing them to God's view of women and girls, introducing them to saving and lending, setting up their own saving and lending pool. So, mind you, these are women who cannot read and write their own name, and they get a passbook to learn how to invest, and they agree together on how much they're gonna put into savings every week. And many times they look at us and say, Wait, we don't have any money. We're, you know, we just can barely feed our families. What are you saying? Why don't you just give us the money? We say, Well, this is important for you to learn that you can find money and you can grow money. So, I mean, there's some people here in the US don't even know that, that it's really important to be faithfully investing little by little. So, one of the things uh is that's we asked them, what are suggestions on how you could find some money? So if like each of the women, all 12 or 20 of them, get on a bus and go to the market and buy little bags of rice, we said, Well, you could appoint two women to go and buy rice in bulk, those big bags, and then at your next meeting, divide those up, and then you'll see that you have extra. And that money is your margin. That's called margin. And then we teach them about the money cycle in a business and how to identify a business that will work in your so all of that learning is going on week by week by week. They are beginning. So sometimes when we first meet these women, they cannot make eye contact with us. They think, oh, we're so unworthy and whatever. If over time they become the leaders in their community. So the one story I love to tell is I was going to celebrate one of these women's groups. I had heard just great things, great fruit. And so I went to visit and I was out with a videographer. We were interviewing woman after woman. Tell us what this has meant for your life and for your family. And the woman that really shocked me, she said, Well, I was sold when I was four years old for a case of beer. And uh, because my parents were alcoholics, and this man is about in his 20s, married me. I think I was five or four or five years old. And she said, We're still married. And she was in her 20s, and I was just so shocked, but we had to move on to the next, you know, celebration. So we all sat down together in this little uh church that was made out of sticks and mud. And this woman I had just interviewed stood up and there was a man sitting beside me, and he leaned over and said, That's my wife. And I didn't know what to say. I thought, You, you bought a child, you know, and I thought, I, you know, I said, Oh, she was just telling me that you bought her. And he said, I know. And and I said, and you have daughters? He said, Yes, we have two, two daughters now. And and I said, Well, what are you gonna do if somebody comes to you like you did and said, I want your girl, I'll take care of her, I'll give you some land and some money, and what will you do? And he said, We don't allow that here anymore. So those women had done such a sweet job of bringing the men along. One of the things they said is girls need to be in school. They don't need to be married or be sold, they need to be in school. But the men said, We we can't do that because the schools are too far away. We're not gonna send them into danger. And they said, We know. And that's why you have to donate land and and bake bricks and build them a school. And they did it. The men donated so she is safe, didn't pay for the school. Um, we didn't, you know, make the architectural design. They did all of that themselves. And then they started going door to door lobbying all the families that school is going to be built soon. We want all the boys and girls to be able to go to school here. And those women lobbied the government, the Indian government, for uh a government-paid teacher to come. And then the women said, we will be the education committee. So we'll watch over and make sure that teacher really is doing his or her job. I mean, the development from, you know, they were nearly naked, they said, they said we didn't know even to be enough to be ashamed of the way that we lived. They had no water source, they put in a water source, they put in a road, they put in a school, they put in a, you know, I just it goes on and on. But that's what happens when people awaken to um their giftedness, to the grace of God, to the good things that can happen if you go his way. There is a way you can say all your daughters, but Jesus has another way, and it's so much better for everyone, every boy, every man, every woman and girl.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

That is that is amazing. So, and that leads me to the the part that I got real excited about discovering so that we could promote you and share you with others, and that is that you're doing all this for for two dollars and ninety cents per week per girl. And so before you tell me the uh the what that includes, which you already did, and and I assume there's a discipleship element of this, and people are coming to Jesus, otherwise they wouldn't be able to move out of that that that that situation. I I was just thinking, even my old ancestry, I'm I'm Scandinavian descent, and I and the Vikings were terrible. They raped, killed, pillaged, and same thing. They'd wipe out the the men and they'd take their wives and their daughters, and and uh through a prospectives bible missionary type study, I had learned that many of these women had reached their husbands for Christ. Keep in mind this is the this is the the guy that killed their husband and took them or killed their dad and took them to be their wives. And the the thought of that just blows my mind that they would that they would be able to, in that situation, not only spread the gospel, which ended up spreading throughout Europe because of this, but just something that you you look at and there you go, there's no good could come out of that. But with our God, surprise. Yeah. So yeah, so again, tell me a little bit more. I think you just shared a lot of what you're doing for two dollars and ninety cents per week per person, and uh there's a preventative element of this, and maybe some of those are restoration where people are coming into the to the program. What what percentage of that do you think the people that you're working with are on the front end helping that that you're helping them, educating them to prevent this from occurring? And then what portion is they they've already unfortunately been been been sold to.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Yeah, well, we we favor the prevention side. We really believe in that as getting upstream of the problem and stopping the flow of vulnerable, you know, children. So prevention is about 80% of what we do. Uh but it's interesting, the same things that work to prevent human trafficking also are restorative. So people, once they are rescued, we do some rescue at border crossings and then assess those people. And is it safe for them to go home? Can we do some community outreach there? Or is it better for them to be in a restoration home or a restoration environment? But in that environment, it's pretty much the same thing. They're introduced to Christ, they learn about their giftedness, learn about uh how they can, as an alternative to being sold, that they can do something else. And all of this, so we love working in partnership with indigenous church planting efforts and evangelism efforts because that's their specialty. And we know that the women that we choose who are a part of those groups, that they are the daily discipleship presence, uh, not only weekly, but daily if they live in that same community. So that's the approach. So for the $2.90, what does that actually do? I've described what the program looks like. These are called Shia Safe groups lovingly, because we want them all safe. We uh we need to train and to send. So, you know, Jesus said, Oh, look at the harvest, it's white. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth more workers. So, in a lot of respects, that's what we're doing with the $2.90. We're making sure that this person can be boots on the ground. She's the most relevant, she's the most insightful, passionate about winning people to Christ and discipling them. We want to make sure she's not having to go work in the field. You know, she can do this part-time or full-time if, you know, so we work on that every year with all the 11 countries that we work. We have regional directors and country directors that are US based who help us identify great partners. They help us um map out strategies. So, what will work in the refugee camp? What will work in one of these villages or in a border town? You know, what will work there? What do we think that will take us in the next 12 months? How much will that cost? And then we're gonna assess that. We're gonna visit in six months, see how it's going. Is there more coaching, training? Do we need to adjust our strategy a little? You know, it's both, it's not one or the other. And then we do a final assessment, evaluation at the end of 12 months and report on those stated goals and other great things that happened. So, how many people joined a group? How many took steps of faith toward Christ? How many have started a micro business? How many are advocating for others in their community? And so we've been doing that, you know, since I don't know, four years into she is a my husband joined staff and he was the PhD systems guy with all the field experience anyone could hope to have. And so he set that in place for us. We still employed that way of working to hold ourselves accountable. To, you know, first of all, with a massive vision like this, we want every girl in a high-risk community to be safe and free and become the person God created her to be so she can change the future. That's kind of a huge vision. It'd be easy to get ahead of our skis and just fall flat and not be, you know, not be effective. So we said, let's let's make sure we're doing measured growth. And then if God does extraordinary things, which he has done in the last year, I'd love to talk about that, then we'll we'll move in his direction. But we're gonna be very measured and careful. We're gonna set expectations, we're gonna measure those expectations before Jesus. So that was always our motivation as we were a starting organization. How can we be sure that we're honest, we're operating with integrity, we're transparent. Uh, what are some of the policies that we should enact from the board level and then operationalize throughout the ministry? We now have 18 people stateside on staff and about 320 co-workers in those 11 countries, but every single person needs to be oriented to those things, those particular values. It's how we exalt Christ is by being great stewards. We we say every time we pray together, Lord, this is your ministry. We want to honor you and follow you. And so we're gonna be the best stewards we could possibly be and not overspend, not try to do fancy things. We want to get simpler and simple, distill down what is the most effective thing that we could possibly do to address human trafficking.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

So you so you would say, and I again I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you would say that there's nothing um unbiblical or unholy about measuring results and and was it was it the first time that you looked at this when when we came to you to start asking you about could you tell us what if if somebody was to provide a gift of a certain dollar amount, could you tell us what might be the the Future outcome based upon your historical results. Did you see anything? Was that because sometimes ministries they're offended with that? It's like, you know, how question us? But again, we're called to be good stewards. And so do you see these things being threatening or less holy, or how do you respond to that?

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Well, I would say as I mentioned, four years into the ministry, my husband Daniel joined and he really said, we we need to set measurable goals and we need to hold ourselves accountable. And then that'll be our learning opportunity, right? Let's say we set some outrageous goals and it it really wasn't realistic that we could accomplish. Well, that's a learning opportunity. So no one should ever take, I I don't feel like we ever fail. I feel like, no, we're just learning new things. So for I would say for 20 years, we have been measuring those outcomes and tracking them within each audited year. So we can tie that to the financials of the year. These are the things we set as goals, these are the things that were accomplished with that amount of money. And when we aspired real early on to be ECFA members, Evangelical Accounts on Financial Accountability. And they have all the standards for good evangelical ministries to follow, and then introduce that to our board. We adopted those and we're we won membership real early on. It was one of the best things we could have done, and then worked with Christian auditors as they would say, Well, this is the way to set up all your financial tracking in a way that you can be certain it's transparent. So when it comes to audit time, it's easy for them to go through because we've already done all the numbers. We've done it for Jesus. We've done it for ourselves so we could learn. And so it's easy to submit to the Calvin Edwards evaluation that they did of us. It wasn't like, oh no, how are we going to do this? It was like, well, we are we had all the numbers already. And even for our projections, we look forward. And I I just love our international team leader. She was a protege of my husband. And she really sets down and sweats through, okay, how many workers are we going to raise up for this three-year strategy? And in what places and what other we're going to have to pay for their travel, maybe printing some materials. It's not much. You know, it's not rocket science. It really is the gospel goes person to person. So for us to raise up those workers and to help fund them and our workers as well, all of that plays into not just what we've done historically, but the plans going forward. Let's set reasonable goals with the opportunities and uh people that God has allowed us to link arm in arm with. And wow, it about five years ago, we started asking the Lord, what if you do double our income? What if people find out about us and they say, Oh yeah, we've been looking for you? What would we do with that? And so we mapped out the strategy that we're literally raising the funds for now and working toward that will double the number of beneficiaries for she asing. So in the in the last audited year, we benefited 100,502 individuals in prevention, rescue, or restoration, most in prevention. Lord, could we double that? And why not? I mean, there if there are a million girls sold uh every month, we've got big work to do. And it it doesn't take much per person, but it does take some sacrifice and willingness to go to the hard places in his name and take a humble posture working arm in arm with those love whole indigenous Christians.

SPEAKER_01 47:55

I'm gonna I'm gonna cover a couple things here real quick that you just talked to beautifully. And so and we know God's a planner. He said, For the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. So to there's so I'm just confirming that you don't feel like there's anything unholy or less spiritual about planning. And I love the fact that you're already thinking about scalability. We get sometimes for people, well, you know, if we gave your organizations a large gift, they wouldn't know what to do with it. Now keep in mind, our organizations are on the larger side. The average ministry, unfortunately, is very small. But I cringe when I hear that because as I talk to you and our other executive directors, they say, no, we're we're set up to be scalable. Test us with that. Give us a large gift and see. Let's just see if that's not an excuse. The other thing that you brought up, the Calvin Edwards report. Yeah, we are so thankful. Um, the Jackson Family Foundation helps cover half of that. You covered the other half. All right, ministry doesn't see a dime. Maybe here this year, Rick Jackson will be governor of our state. He's running for it. So we're praying for that to that for that to happen. But we're just so thankful for the partners that have come alongside us because they see organizations like She is Safe on our top 10 list, which I talked to them about personally just recently, and uh they're just so excited about what you're doing. We are excited because again, it sounds like we were on parallel paths that God was working with you internally to evaluate, look at, and uh what you know the the cost would be to increase what we're doing and and what our impact per dollar is right now. So that that is also exciting uh to us to hear that, to confirm the the process that we went through to vet you, to get you on our top 10 list. We just pray that there's many people watching this or will listen to this that will be led to to give to Shia's Safe. We say that you don't have to give through the the National Christian Foundation platform that we have on our website, give you know directly to you. If they want to have that relationship, but they want to be confidential, they can just give through ROI ministry. Either way is fine. We don't we don't charge a handling fee, we don't sell any information or give it away. Our board underwrites all our expenses. And so, with that, what's one last thing that you would share with our listeners just to leave them with as they think about hopefully being encouraged from this conversation? I am, by the way, but to act. You know, James says, you tell me about your faith by what you you believe. I'll show you my faith by what I do. And what we want is people to come alongside and to partner with you with financial support. And what would you tell those people that are listening to this right now? How how can they do that, or what final words of wisdom would you share with them to hopefully get them to cross over that line to get involved and partnering with you?

SPEAKER_00 50:46

Oh, thank you. I would say that we stand at the threshold of a historic moment with all of the upheaval in the Middle East. And if you believe the prophecy is being fulfilled in our day, we don't want to be flat-footed during this time. We want to move into that area. And we have been told by our Arab Christian partners there that they want us in every one of those 14 Arab nations and they are ready. We took some of those leader women out of the country to have time with them. And in the closing remarks from them, they would say, we can go to all 14 nations. We have connections and women there who are willing to run this program, but we are not going to go without you. So that's the urgency before us. We have women lining up for programs in Asia that cannot join. We can't move across that threshold without more prayer and financial partners. So Sheasafe.org is where to get that information. I would say also you could invite, I'd be happy to come to your church or to your Bible study group, share about the two books with Intervar City Press. Now we have two of them. And also how to keep kids safe near and far, how you can participate and become the advocate. You know, Proverbs 31 really is about those of us who live like royalty and we have the privileges that we have. We can expend that on hedonism. Basically, the first nine verses of Proverbs 31 was King Lemuel's mother saying, What are you doing? Giving your strength to chase after women, you're getting drunk with beer and wine, and you're gonna forget what you're here to do, which is to speak up or advocate for those who are oppressed and enslaved. Get justice for them. And that's you and me, all of us live better than royalty did when that was penned. And so we have that immense opportunity to participate with what God is doing, to bring history on home, uh, to Jesus taking making his enemies his footstool.

SPEAKER_01 52:55

Well, thank you, Michelle. Thanks, your whole team and what She is Safe is doing. I love you and we appreciate what you're doing. And uh I was just so impressed before and and and even times 10 after getting hear your story and and a little bit more about what Shea Safe is doing. So thank you again. Have a blessing.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Thank you, Tim.

SPEAKER_01 53:14

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