“India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Internal forced labor may constitute India's largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children in debt bondage are forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, embroidery factories, and brothel houses. Although no comprehensive study of forced and bonded labor has been carried out, some NGOs estimate this problem affects tens of millions of Indians. Those from India’s most disadvantaged social economic strata are particularly vulnerable to forced or bonded labor and sex trafficking. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are also subjected to forced labor as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agricultural workers.” - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009

December 08 a group of us met at the JFK Airport in New York, in transit to Hyderabad, India. There we spent time observing, loving, serving and learning about human trafficking, debt bondage and slavery in the majority of the Indian provinces. The term “out of sight out of mind” kept hitting me right in the middle of my forehead. “How could I have not known that TENS OF MILLIONS of Indian inhabitants are enslaved!” … the thoughts that each person I pass is a potential slave, a sex working, a life begging for the hope of freedom and a life worth living were the most frequent and the most echoed thoughts as we returned home.

But first … Her name was Axshmia, she was the youngest in her family, her mother and father had died, and she lived with her uncle in the Vishakhapatnam province. She was what the Hindu Caste System calls the Shudras or Untouchables. The Untouchables were literally social outcasts, to the point where after tea they were ordered to break the tea cup they drank from so no one else would drink from it. Axshmia, as we were visiting her village, was the “Belle of the Ball”. With a smile that would steal even the hardest heart and eyes that would make anyone gaze longer. Her family is of the poorest in Vishakhapatnam, her mother and father gone and her only guardian is an uncle who has his family to provide for as well as Axshmia.

With all of the variables … the probability of Axshmia being sold into forced labor and or sex trafficking is sky ward.

Resc/You exists because of Axshmia, and the innocent, beautiful and destitute children she stands for.

Resc/You has to happen to see change in not only the lives of the ones who are held in bondage, but also to see change in the hearts of the ones who bind.

-Kris Byerly