Young teenage girls sleeping in graveyards, back alleys and hovels that flood when it rains.  Most are abused and raped sometimes every night.  One day it becomes too much to take and to make an income from the abuse seems preferable to remaining a victim.  These ones are not nameless statistics.  They each have a name.  We know many of their names.  And we are trusting for the day that prostitution no longer has to be the only option for them.

We long to bring them home.  To a safe place to heal, to learn, to grow, to find a hope and a future far from the pain of the past. 

There are many who desperately want to leave the brothels we have been blessed to have made friends in.  Women of all ages forced by circumstances, many trafficked from neighboring nations to sell the one thing they have left.  Their dignity.  We think love looks like healing hearts and restoring destinies stolen by abuse.

We are actively seeking the right land to begin building a simple compound of housing and a training area for 8-12 women to come and start a year long restoration journey with us.  We are dreaming big and trusting our Papa for His provision.  His heart burns with us for these precious daughters He loves so much. Our project location will remain anonymous for the safety of those we will be serving.

Each woman who comes to us will be living in community engaged in an individually  structured course of discipleship, healing ministry/counseling, parenting classes for new moms, literacy training and classes to learn tailoring and sewing as well as jewelry making.  We expect when they graduate they will have all they need to step into their destinies and fly, set free.  We plan to present each graduate with a sewing machine and start up kit for a tailoring business that is locally sustainable.

BUT the vision is even bigger than this.  Michele is dreaming about, in her spare time (everyone laugh!), of launching a mid range fashion brand for women’s accessories back in the West (think Vera Bradley, Kathy Von Zealand with a kingdom justice mission and a niche boutique market) sometime in the next year or so… called Haya: Designs for Life made by women we have rescued from trafficking and prostitution or at risk of being drawn into such.

Haya is the colloquial arabic word for Life.  And that is what this is all about releasing LIFE and life more abundantly on every level.

What is unique about Haya is we don’t want our women to be “employed by” and thus dependent on any outside entity for their sole income source.  Thus we will be training them in tailoring and jewelry making in GENERAL and then add in Haya’s specific design pieces, following a set pattern that they would be able follow on new varieties. Our graduates will be Haya’s first line of “contractors” when they need to make more product thus supplementing their locally sustainable business.  The majority of the profits would be sown back into this project allowing us to help even more women and girls.

We have lots of friends joining the discussion and dreaming God-size dreams about setting captives free.  Won’t you dream with us? And pretty please keep this in prayer.  We are really stepping out in faith on this one… for none of us have been this way before.

Any fashionistas, designers, gallery owners, boutique entreprenuers, and/or budding abolitionists interested in any of this?  Contact Michele at irisminsudan (a) gmail.com (put together with an @ sign… we are tricking the spammers this way ).  She needs lots of help.  Trust us on this one .