Background
Earth's most urgent problem created by humans and capable of being eradicated is slavery.
The U.S. Department of State estimates that between 10 and 27 million people are slaves today. Every year, 1 million children under the age of 18 are sold as sex slaves in the sex trafficking industry. Trafficking is highly lucrative. From selling a child's body, traffickers and pimps can make $65,000 per victim per year. The child slave trade has spawned a global and commercial pedophile industry that encourages sex predators and destroys childhoods. Forced child labor also brutalizes victims by stunting their physical, moral, emotional, and intellectual growth.
Child slavery flourished in South Asia. Modern slavery expert Kevin Bales estimates there are 16 million slaves in the region. Wh
en a child's parents die or simply cannot provide, that child is most susceptible to traffickers. The Indian state of Orissa is a hunting ground for traffickers who supply the brothels and workhouses of Kolkata/Calcutta. Traffickers look for strong but uneducated children living in abject poverty without parental care.
Project Overview
In the village of Nabrangpur, Orissa, 150 homeless orphans are currently at risk. Johnny Birtalan, an analyst at Chevron in the UK, and Matthew Fredericks, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary in the US, have decided to join forces with a non-profit, Good News India, and raise the money to build a Dream Center that will shelter, feed, provide for, and protect the 150 orphans of Nabrangpur
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To construct the Dream Center and provide basic necessaries for the children, Matthew and Johnny need to raise $70,000. All proceeds will go to Good News India, a Christian non-profit dedicated to stopping child trafficking in India through preventative measures.
To raise the money, Matthew and Johnny intend to bike across the United States from California to New York. We will ask local businesses, churches, family, and friends to sponsor them. Sponsors will pledge a dollar or cent amount per mile for the 3,000 mile bike ride.