The Journey from Believing to Becoming
A friend of Stories took up a challenge we issued a few years back to choose to purchase one thing fair trade a month and because of this, had a perspective shift on her shopping habits. From there she became an advocate and supporter of not only purposeful purchasing but also the work we are doing at Stories Foundation. Since then, she has been intentional about learning more herself, and sharing what she has learned with others, while also choosing to support us with her finances and her voice. If you were to look at her contribution from a merely
numbers perspective it may seem inconsequential to you. However, she came up the other day when I was talking with Chris about what it looks like to go from believing human trafficking is awful, to becoming someone who fights against human trafficking in their every day life.
This friend learned about human trafficking and exploitation, understood that she could take seemingly small steps towards change, and then steadily began to do so. She is the poster child in my mind for what it could look like if community members began to fight against human trafficking by choosing to become aware and then allowing that awareness to change how they spend their resources of influence, time, energy and finances.
I have been reading a book called The J Curve, it is a book about following Jesus by faith, but there is a concept in it I want to share with you whether you are a person of faith or not. It is the concept of believing versus becoming. For example, in business school you learn and believe the concepts you are taught, but you don’t become a business owner or entrepreneur until you actually put those beliefs into practice and live them out. This is the same with advocacy work. We can hear, become aware of, human trafficking and learn about the things we can do but we don’t become an active part of the solution until we change our behaviors. Changing our behavior means we begin to become the things we believe in. 8+ years ago I believed something needed to be done about human trafficking and over the course of time and many big and small choices of acting on that belief I have becoming an advocate to bring awareness to human trafficking and exploitation.
You may have heard about human trafficking and believe it is terrible and shouldn’t exist, but until you allow that belief to change how you act you will not become a part of the solution, you will not be a part of stopping trafficking.
There is a common myth many of us believe and it is one we fight against here at Stories Foundation, it is that human trafficking is too big for each of us as community members to do something about, or that human trafficking is a niche issue and therefore not something each one of us needs to be actively aware of and engaged in stopping. The truth about human trafficking and exploitation is it’s insidious nature that creeps into all of our lives. We each have an effect on trafficking and exploitation for the simple fact that we all shop, we all live in an over-sexualized culture, and we all have proximity to vulnerable people. Because of these three things, we all have opportunity to change small things in our day to day lives to counter the industry of trafficking and exploitation.
January is human trafficking awareness month, which if I am going to be honest, I struggle with months and days designated for human trafficking awareness. Not because I don’t think awareness is important, I most definitely do, but because we should be changing our daily habits to support a world that doesn’t run on exploitation. It shouldn’t be resigned to a special day or month, but valuing human beings should be something we strive to do with our choices every single day. This should become default for us. Reading labels, being intentional purchasers, using our influence to start conversations about dignity and honor of people, talking about the harms of an over sexualized culture with those in our communities, seeing vulnerabilities around us and covering them through encouraging texts, visa gift cards, bringing dinner - I could go on, but I hope you get the picture. We all can daily be a part of the fight against trafficking and exploitation, and even more than that, if we believe it is wrong to have human trafficking and believe change should happen, we ourselves have to be the ones to instigate this change in our own lives.
We need to move from simply becoming aware and believing exploitation is wrong to becoming people who change our behaviors so we are part of the solution to human trafficking. Like my friend, we need to not only stop at believing something is wrong, we must look at our lives and begin to make small consistent changes where we live out our beliefs. It may not look fancy or impactful at the beginning, but changing ourselves and changing a culture so we can see trafficking decrease is a long game.
I believe strongly when we see many of us making small consistent changes in our daily habits, conversations, and how we spend our resources then we will begin to see a shift in the exploitation that has been allowed to flourish in our culture.
So, I invite you friend, to make a change today. Choose one thing you can purchase in an ethical, intentional way. Have one conversation with someone about what you have learned about trafficking maybe from the Connecting Our Stories podcast or at an event. Invite a small group of your peers to do the online awareness curriculum we have put out. Join the StoryChangers coffee club, give financially to build Storyteller Cafe, become a monthly donor. There are so many small things you can do today to become what you believe in. Become part of changing the issue of human trafficking and exploitation in our communities. We cannot change anyone but ourselves, so changing ourselves is a great place to start.
