Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

This weekend is a weekend of prayer. Tomorrow is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. According to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) a n estimated 27 million people are trafficked globally on an annual basis. NCR reports some amazing data. Did you know human trafficking is growing in the crime industry, second in scope only to the drug trade and equal to arms? Revenue from human trafficking is estimated at more than $32 billion annually.  Can you imagine 27 million people being abducted and forced to do what their captors wish? Can you imagine it happening to someone you love? It might be hard to think about, but it does happen every day. People are taken; people are enslaved; people aren’t free. For Northwest Florida locals, tomorrow is the Not My Child Human Trafficking Awareness event at the Pelican Beach Resort Conference Center in Destin. It’s an event to prevent sexual exploitation on the Emerald Coast. Here are more events across the nation. Last Janu...

Nelson Mandela lays in a hospital bed in South Africa waiting. I wonder if it reminds him of his 27 years in prison. He may not reach his 95 th birthday, which is less than two weeks away on the 18 th of June. It’s a day set aside as a call to action for people everywhere to make the world a better place. For Mandela Day, the Nelson Mandela Foundation asks people to set aside 67 minutes for service, one minute for each year of his service to his country. Although there are organized events, one of the easiest things to do is post something on Facebook that celebrates, or brings awareness to a human rights issue for the 67 days starting with his birthday. That may sound like a lot of days to write about human rights, until you start looking for human rights issues. There’s no shortage of them. Humanrights.com, Amnesty International and other sources report that individuals are: Tortured or abused in at least 81 countries Face unfair trials in at least 54 countries...