Dear listeners,

Today’s very special podcast guest on the Hunger for Righteousness podcast is Manal Moussa, the executive director of Leaving the Jar, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting global human trafficking through rescue, recovery, rehabilitation and education.

If you are wondering what human trafficking has to do with Hunger for Righteousness, be sure to read chapter 7 in the book!

I learned SO MUCH I did not know about human trafficking during this interview. Manal shared some eye-opening and critical information about understanding and identifying human trafficking. This global evil is sadly happening all around us.

Here’s a little bit of what Manal shares about what human trafficking is:

“Human trafficking is modern day slavery. And it is involved with force, fraud, and coercion, and basically using another person to solicit sex or labor trafficking. So there's two categories, labor trafficking and sex trafficking… Somehow they're tricked into it. Somehow they're blackmailed into it or forced through maybe like the influence of drugs or different things; sometimes it involves taking their paperwork so they tell them this is the job you're given you have to do what I say because I have control of your paperwork. But in general nobody wakes up in the morning and says yay I'm going to be you know trafficked and I'm going to be abused and used over and over.

It is really a very evil environment. And just to give you a little bit of understanding, it's a huge business enterprise. They make an average of $347 billion that's very close to what Apple makes. That's just to give you an idea of how big and huge this evil enterprise is and it does not discriminate of cultures, locations, age. I mean the average age mainly targets girls and age 12 to 14 because that way these are very vulnerable populations and they can definitely use the multiple times. But boys are still also a target. … It’s in almost every country.”

On how trafficking can happen anywhere:

“We think of trafficking as kidnapping. Somebody's gonna kidnap my kids or somebody's gonna take them from point A to point B and use them and I'm not gonna see them again. So many people are trafficked and they still sleep in their home, sleep in their bed with their family and nobody recognizes them. That person that's in pain could be your neighbor, your coworker, somebody with your children at school.”

Yes, human trafficking happens in the United States, in the suburbs as well as the cities. A trafficking victim could even be coming to church with us.

I’m so glad that there are organizations like Leaving the Jar that are working directly with survivors, and educating everyone else to identify when trafficking is happening, as well as prevent it in the first place. Leaving the Jar does a free training program for churches and other youth ministry services. Please contact them if you are interested in arranging something like this.

You can support Leaving the Jar AND fill the Easter basket of your loved one by purchasing their newly released 30-day devotional and guided prayer journal, Living Waters:

If you would like to support their work financially, you can donate to Leaving the Jar here:

You can also support Leaving the Jar’s work by volunteering. To learn more about volunteer opportunities, click here:

For even more information about global human trafficking, Manal recommends the National Human Trafficking Hotline:

NOTE TO LISTENERS: There is a 20 second lull in the audio/video when one of our screens froze. I tried to edit that silence but could not figure out how to do it. Please forgive my lack of tech prowess!

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. Please share them below, and thank you for listening!

Phoebe Farag Mikhail

Get full access to Being in Community, Phoebe Farag Mikhail's Newsletter at phoebefaragmikhail.substack.com/subscribe