How to Reach Exploited Women in Your Community

James 1:27 “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction…”

Exodus Cry’s Intervention team reaches individuals exploited in the sex industry in brothels, strip clubs, jails, online venues, and on the streets—one by one.

Because we saw a great need, we prayed for ways to strategically multiply our efforts and reach many more sexually exploited women. This is in hopes that their tragic stories can be rewritten.

After all the years of outreach we began compiling a guide of best practices. We aim to create a tool for teams and organizations to intentionally and effectively help women escape the sex industry.

This guide is composed by several Exodus Cry contributors. In addition, it is survivor-informed (special thanks to our board member and heroic trafficking survivor-leader, Rebecca Bender). Over the last three years, the manual has grown and transformed. The time has finally come to get it published! We are thrilled to announce the soon release of our first official Intervention and Outreach Manual!

So how will this multiply efforts to reach exploited individuals?

This 200-page guide will train thousands of abolitionists. In fact, with early drafts of the manual we’ve trained about 1,800 across America, Mexico, Brazil, and the UK. There are many who want to help those bound in the sex industry but don’t know where to start. And that’s why this manual was created!

A Testimony from Brazil

During the World Cup, Exodus Cry sent teams to Brazil for our Liberdade outreach initiative. While there, we trained churches and communities in shorter versions of this manual in Portuguese.

I revisited Manaus, the Brazilian city where I served as the Team Leader, earlier this year. While in this city, I visited with one of our partner churches there. This church has a red-light district ministry called The Hosea Project, which reaches exploited women and men on the streets.

While at the church, I met a woman named Bella* who said to me, “Helen, I am the fruit.”

She explained that last year, The Hosea Project team—whom we had the honor of training—reached out to her while she was in prostitution. That was the beginning of her journey of freedom and restoration.

She found the Lord at their church, left her life of exploitation, and experienced great healing. She said she was the “fruit” of our collective labors in Brazil to set captives free.

Bella’s face glowed as she smiled, hugged me, and said “thank you for coming to Brazil, and you must keep doing this ministry to women like me! I would not be here without it.”

A deep urgency fills our hearts to see others educated, trained, and empowered to reach individuals like Bella. The Intervention and Outreach Manual offers a tool kit for those who want to start an organized front-line outreach.

We are convinced the Church is God’s “plan A” to establish justice on the earth. We believe this manual will help empower the Body of Christ to take the love and light of Jesus to the darkest places, and see Him write new stories of hope and redemption.

Reaching Women Exploited Online

This manual also offers particular insight on reaching those exploited online.

In New York it is estimated that 90% of commercial sexual exploitation in that city moved online between 2009 and 2011.¹ The “world’s biggest red-light district” is now on the internet—on sites like backpage.com—where ads selling women abound. A large portion of the manual outlines clear methods for texting and meeting women exploited over the internet. Ultimately, this is so that relationships with them can begin.

What’s Included in the Manual

• Intervention 101
• Heart values for outreach workers
• Outreach (including streets, strip clubs, jail, and online)
• Understanding pimps
• Building a Christ-centered team community
• Online prostitution and the texting model (including sample scripts)
• Forming relationship with exploited individuals
• Males in outreach
• Forming an exit plan
• Understanding legal reform
• Testimonies and first-hand stories of outreach encounters
• Self-care
• Resources and more

Your giving helps fund the release of this manual and fuel our Intervention work. It also helps write new stories for those who are bound in the sex industry. It helps to multiply the impact of this work by equipping many more abolitionists to reach exploited individuals.