Awareness Is Not the Point

January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month.
And honestly…awareness is not the point.

If awareness were enough, this wouldn’t still be happening in our neighborhoods. In our schools. In our systems. Often right in front of us. Awareness can open our eyes, sure…but it doesn’t actually stop the harm.

Action does.
Staying does.
People showing up over time does.

Trafficking grows where vulnerability meets silence. Where kids go unnoticed for long enough that attention feels like love. Where families are exhausted and unsupported. Where communities quietly assume someone else will step in.

And Scripture doesn’t really give us room to sit this one out.

Jesus never treated vulnerable people like a side project. Children weren’t an interruption to Him…they were the point. The poor, the exploited, the overlooked…He didn’t talk about them. He moved toward them.

When Jesus says, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me,” He’s not being poetic. He’s being direct.

Which means trafficking isn’t just a criminal issue or a social issue. It’s a faith issue. A formation issue. A question of what kind of people we’re becoming when the work is slow, messy, and unseen. And while our faith shapes why we do this work, the responsibility to protect the vulnerable belongs to all of us. 

At Traffick911, we love kids and their families for the long-haul. Most days, it looks like showing up again after trust has been broken in their lives, and safety is unfamiliar. It’s prioritizing what’s best for each child, even when patience takes more work. It’s believing kids whose stories don’t come out clean or convenient. It’s advocating inside systems that weren’t always built with trauma in mind and refusing to accept that as “just how it is.”

This isn’t rescue-movie work.
It’s stay-the-course work.
And it requires more than a moment of concern.

It requires giving that lasts longer than a news cycle.
Praying in ways that actually ask God to disrupt broken systems.
Choosing to stay engaged even when it’s uncomfortable or costly.

Some of us speak from lived experience, not to make ourselves the focus, but to remind people that survivors aren’t abstract. We’re real people. Parents. Leaders. Neighbors. People whose lives didn’t end where harm began.

Human Trafficking Awareness Month isn’t about feeling something for a moment. It’s an invitation to show up differently, to stay longer, to care in ways that change the world! 

Because awareness fades.
Outrage cools off.
But love stays, and LOVE changes lives.

And that’s the commitment this work deserves.