children Archives - Shared Hope International

September 20, 2013 by Guest

A Father for Freedom

Written by: Marissa Montalvo

Life is one of the most precious things in the world and it takes tremendous courage to save one. Sparsh Founder, Timothy Hirwale, shares what motivated him to rescue and raise dozens of India’s children as his own and how his organization is making an impact.

“There was a time in my dad’s life he was left alone to die on the street of Marathwada, a rural place in Maharashtra, India. An American missionary named Elizabeth Walton picked him up as a malnourished child and cared for him and gave him the name Daniel. Looking at the beautiful lifestyle of my orphan mom and dad I was inspired and thought I would love to care and love these precious children.”

Dedicated to offering that same love and care that Walton gave his father, Timothy decided to create Sparsh, an organization that offers protection and a family to children and orphans.

“For me the thought of a child being left alone without care and protection and without love makes me move in my inner spirit. You can call it a call of God or inner urge to do something for children, but from the age of 18 there was only one aim and goal or ambition and that was to serve the children.”

When he was 18-years-old, he was called “bachelor dad” because he had already taken in two 3-year-old children.

“The first time when we picked up Payal and Sunny from the red light area to Sparsh, there was this tremendous joyful satisfaction in my heart but it took 10 days for Payal to accept me as a father because she had horrific time with her father.”

His mission isn’t easy. Timothy says some of his greatest challenges are overcoming the helplessness he feels when he can’t accept more children because his home is full, caring for the education and development of so many children, and finding the time between fundraising, administration and running the home to offer individualize love and support to all 17 children. Not to mention the logistics of transporting 22 people using one small six-passenger van. Placing his challenges into perspective, he says stories like Nandini’s are worth it.

“We brought Nandini from the street. She was full of mud and carbon all over her body. When we started giving her a bath, all the black water flowed from the bathroom. Seeing that, all rest of the children screamed and ran away saying that she is very unclean. But as the days pass by, when I look back, I thank God for this little life, full of joy and smiles every day.”

Timothy says being a good father means being a good role model, building comfortable communication so children feel free and open to be themselves, finding creative and resourceful ways to provide for the family, and by taking the time to instill values in the children.

“In my opinion, a good father introduces his children to the future and does not try to keep them from world. I feel [parent should] let them see everything, have experiences of their own and when the time comes for them to make the right decision of following any religion or career, it is their own choice. I will rest assured because the values, the love I have showed to them, is genuine and you will get a genuine result. Your love and values will always guide them to be a successful human being.”

The time and energy Timothy invested in being the best father he can is paying off. He says he has seen an increase in the children’s level of trust and sense of security since coming to the home. They are sharing their feelings, hugging and showing intentional acts of kindness-actions that indicate the children are developing healthy patterns of affection and relationship skills which can be more difficult for children with traumatic backgrounds to develop.

Timothy is a man of prayer, passion and purpose. He says men must step forward with courage and boldness to fight against injustice.

“I feel God has blessed America with everything, what other nations covet. The God given freedom is being taken away by human traffickers all over. Our negligence is bringing the HIV rates high on rampage. Our negligence is seeing our own daughters and sisters being taken away in front of our eyes…Feeling sorry for the horrific act is not just enough. It is the time to act. Many think it won’t happen to me or my family, but greed and pleasure does not know any relation and color. I pray and plead, let’s make human trafficking a history.”

About Sparsh
In 2011, Shared Hope International expanded its impact in India by welcoming a new partner in Pune. Sparsh, which means “touch” is a restoration refuge providing a family environment to women on a journey of restoration after sex trafficking, their children, and children whose mothers are still enslaved in Pune’s red light district.

March 6, 2012 by SHI Staff

Maelie could tell you how it happens…

She wasn’t grabbed and thrown in the trunk of his car. She hadn’t run away from home in search of thrills on the street. No, she was lured away…charmed away…friended away. For him, it was easy enough, with a bit of patience–a promise of something she needed, or something she wanted bad enough to take a chance. Her body, young as it was, would bring in lots of cash; she was worth the time it took to recruit her. For her anguished parents, distraught and desperate to locate that “normal” child who disappeared into a dark relationship, the nightmare had begun.

You see, there is an insatiable market for sex with children and there is a lot of money to be made off eager buyers–it’s a matter of supply and demand.

But it’s also a matter of evil. This evil is thick and rank along the crowded brothel allies; it smirks as it describes the ‘high’ of taking away a child’s innocence; it slashes her with a box cutter when she refuses; it tells her what happened to her was all her fault; it reminds her that she is nothing but trash. The sheer weight of such evil is stunning and threatens to immobilize us…but for the stories of those that have overcome, like Maelie and the family that loved her and brought her home again!

Together we must act to protect our children and take back those who have been lost. Please go online today and download your state’s Protected Innocence Challenge Report Card, then share it with your state legislators. You have a powerful voice for change. Use it!

November 17, 2011 by SHI Staff

Part 4: Hotels, Planes, and Taxis, Oh My! The efforts to stop facilitating child sex trafficking

The fourth component of the Protected Innocence Initiative is “Criminal Provisions for Facilitators.” Hotels are perhaps one of the most well recognized facilitators in the sex trafficking industry. At hotels young children are taken by their traffickers and sold to dozens of men a night. Airlines and taxis also act as facilitators in the sex trafficking industry.

Through the Protected Innocence Initiative, Shared Hope is providing recommendations on how to strengthen state laws to adequately penalize and criminalize the facilitation of child sex trafficking. These measures include criminalizing the facilitation of trafficking through the state human trafficking law and making the promotion of child sex tourism illegal.

Recognizing the critical role facilitators play in the exploitation of children, some hotels and airlines have taken it upon themselves to no longer act as facilitators in the child sex trade. Here are some of the positive steps hotels and airlines have taken in order to stop child sex trafficking.

Airlines are often used by traffickers to transport their victims to domestic and international locations. Carol Smolenski, U.S. Director of End Child Prostitution, Child Prostitution, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT), says that sex tourists fall into two categories “preferential child abusers” or “situational child abusers.” “Preferential abusers” have a preference for having sex with children, while “situational abusers” may not be particularly interested in children, but may try having sex with them to try something new, particularly while abroad. Smolenski believes that the second group may be educated through public awareness campaigns to change their behavior. For instance, in order to discourage child sex trafficking, Air-France runs in-flight videos against child sex tourism. These videos are played on 94 of the airline’s long-distance flights and are viewed by up to 46,000 passengers a day. Ten other airlines have also used the video, though currently no United State’s airlines have agreed to show videos discouraging child sex tourism on their flights.

U.S. airlines have taken a stand to fight child sex trafficking through the “Flight Attendant Initiative” which was designed by Innocence at Risk. The “Flight Attendant Initiative” requires airline personal to be educated on recognizing and reporting human trafficking on flights. Flight attendants also wear wristbands with the National Human Trafficking Hotline (1-888-373-7888) so they can report suspicious activity from the air. So far, one third of American Airlines’ 19,000 flight attendants received the training. It is expected the program will soon expand to other airlines.

A second industry that has taken a stand against child sex trafficking is the hotel industry. ECPAT released a document entitled “The Code” that hotels and travel agencies may sign to show they are working to combat child trafficking. Since it’s inception in 1998, 1,030 companies have signed the ECPAT Code of Conduct to combat child sex trafficking, though only six American companies have signed.

These efforts, combined with stronger state penalties for those individuals and organizations that facilitate the sale of children, will help end child sex trafficking. To find out the level of your state’s legal response to facilitators, join us on December 1 when we release all 51 state Report Cards at the National Association of Attorneys General winter meeting in San Antonio, Texas. We hope you’ll tune in the rest of the week for more information on the initiative.