Friends, just an encouragement to join-in on IJM’s Global Prayer Gathering this weekend from wherever you are. If you are not one of the nearly 1,000 people joining in person here in the DC Area, you can connect through our live-stream and live-blog presence all throughout the weekend. Hope you’ll join!
If you have not already heard, Jeff Shinabarger (the creative mind behind the Catalyst Conferences, founder of Gift Card Giver, and strategist for many NGO’s and innovative ventures) recently launch a new community called Plywood People. In their own words, they are “searching for social problems with the hope to match them with entrepreneurial creativity to organize, innovate, and manage ideas that produce change.”
In honor of Human Trafficking Awareness Day, IJM is featured on the Plywood People blog today. We hope you will be encouraged in your own fight against trafficking as you read this story of a city and children redeemed.
Note: I am pleased to introduce you to the IJM Institute’s intern for this semester, Tim Hakim. Tim will be guest-blogging for the Institute this week, bringing you news of significant casework victories from the past few days. I’ll look forward to sharing more about who Tim is throughout this week. As always, please feel free to leave your comments and questions and Tim will enjoy the opportunity to dialogue with you on these matters.
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This past week IJM Manila (Philippines) saw the conviction of a pimp accused of sexual abuse and prostitution of minor boys in Paco, Manila. After four years in litigation, Albert Sanchez was found guilty of qualified trafficking and has been sentenced by a Manila court to serve a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison. This case is particularly significant for IJM on several fronts: The charge of qualified trafficking, which carries a minimum sentence of 20 years, is a particularly serious charge requiring a more complex standard of proof, and there are only a handful of successful convictions each year on this charge. In addition, this case involved a series of difficulties that threatened to derail the case and prevent this perpetrator from being held accountable for his actions. The case’s success is a testament to God’s grace and the integrity of the Philippine judicial system to administer justice even in difficult cases. This case is also unique in that it marks the first conviction for qualified trafficking of male victims in the Philippines, even outside of IJM’s work.
I’m eager to introduce you to our National Director of Church Mobilization, Jim Martin. I’m sure some of you are already quite familiar with Jim, and I look forward to all of you getting a chance to know him better as he begins to guest blog here at the Institute on a regular basis. Here is an update from Jim on IJM’s brand new documentary, At the End of Slavery and details on how you can be involved in the movement!
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Dear friends,
As of today more than 85 churches have decided to host a screening of IJM’s new documentary film, At the End of Slavery. The response to the film has overwhelming! We are thankful and excited for the gathering momentum of this movement. Many churches see screening this 30 minute documentary as a rare opportunity for their church to be on the forefront of an issue that really matters to the people of their neighborhoods and community. And by following the simple suggestions contained in the screening kit (what we’re calling a “house party-in-a-box"), churches are not only providing their communities with much-needed education regarding the modern horror of slavery, they are offering something even more essential and rare: concrete action steps that every-day citizens can take to join the battle against violent oppression.
If you would like to encourage your church to screen this film, we can resource you with everything you need. The invitation is a simple one: Host a screening in your church facility and invite everyone to come. The screening kit provides dozens of helpful tips for everything from how to introduce the film to how to move people to action after the screening. The film itself does a wonderful job of presenting to reality of modern-day slavery while offering substantive hope based on real change taking place in our world right now. The kit also provides 2 copies of the film - one for your use, and one for you to give away to someone else who commits to hosting a house party.
Consider connecting your church with these resources:
View the trailer at: http://www.attheendofslavery.com/
Contact IJM directly to host a screening by sending an email to: .
The IJM Institute blog team will be taking a brief hiatus but looks forward to interacting with you later next week. In the meantime, please pray for wisdom for our teams in Bolivia and South Asia in particular this week as they confront complicated cases.
If you are new to this blog, I would encourage you to select the “Prayer” category in the pull-down menu to your right and read some of the remarkable stories of rescue that have happened this summer.
Wednesday I’m heading out to SoCal for the Catalyst West Coast conference. Have loved being a part of the Catalyst events in Atlanta, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to be a part of their first West Coast version of the event, along with 3,000 others. Ben Arment is the director of Catalyst West - if you don’t follow his blog yet, check it out and you’ll see what I mean when I say it’s a daily must-read for church leaders and those interested in innovation/creative development in general.
I’ll be interviewed main-stage during the Friday morning session alongside Naomi Zacharias and Jeannie Mai - if you’re there, be sure to say hello!
Whether you were able to join us in person for GPG09 or not, you’ll probably enjoy the fantastic photos our team captured throughout the weekend. Ted Haddock is sorting through the thousands and we’ll be sharing the best shots with you here on the blog next week.
In the meantime, check-out the archives from GPG Live - there are photos embedded in some of the live blogging sessions, and some great raw/unproduced video footage of Lamont, Sara Groves, our VP of Investigations, and other speakers. Let us know what you think! http://www.ijminstitute.org/index.php/gpglive
Brand new this year, we have launched a “GPG Live” blog presence through the IJM Institute. When you go to this page: http://www.ijminstitute.org/index.php/gpglive you will find a team of IJM staff providing coverage of the GPG, moment by moment, in real time. We will post photos, prayer requests, and more. We hope this will give you an extra layer of participation in the event, a record to look back to, and a website to point your friends, family, and church to as well. Please do invite others to track with this event, moment by moment, starting Friday afternoon!
Friday // March 27, 2009
1:30pm Pre-Weekend Gathering (for students)
6:00pm Reception
7:00pm Banquet Dinner and Worship (featuring IJM President and CEO, Gary Haugen, Lamont Hiebert, and Ten Shekel Shirt, and IJM Guatemala)
9:30pm Late-Evening Prayer and Worship (featuring Lamont Hiebert and Ten Shekel Shirt)
Have questions? Coming and wondering about various details? Just post a comment to this post here at the Institute and we’ll be able to respond quickly with the information you need.
We are so grateful for your prayers and hope to know that you are participating with us from wherever you are!
David Hanke, pastor of Restoration Anglican Church in Arlington, VA (a plant of The Falls Church, pre-launching in 2 days), wrote a blog post that struck a deep chord with me. I thought many of you might appreciate this as well. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Access the blog post here or read below:
My Weapons
I just saw ironman again last week. RDjr’s character is really winsome. He makes the movie. This time, a particular line completely grabbed me.
If you have not secured access to the full text of the New Yorker’s IJM feature yet, here are a few spots to gain a glimpse into the content:
On IJM’s main website: www.ijm.org/newyorker—supplementary resources and a Q&A with IJM President & Ceo Gary Haugen
From today’s Wall Street Journal, Law Blog:
“In this week’s issue of the New Yorker (click here), Haugen (pictured) says that the four billion people who live in places with a dysfunctional justice system “don’t get a sleepy lawyer or a crummy lawyer — they get nada.” He says:
“The colonial powers who built justice systems in the Third World never intended to serve these people. Colonial justice was designed to control these people. Then, in the nineteen-sixties, the colonial powers left, and the justice systems stayed. Nobody, when we started international development, said, ‘Let’s revamp the public justice system. Let’s go into these places, where you either have colonial or pre-modern systems of justice, and bring to bear what we’ve learned about due process.’ No, that part was skipped. . . The people who care about injustice don’t tend to spend a lot of time in courtrooms or police stations. We tend to use words like ‘corrupt’ and give up on these places."”
Last Friday we secured an hour of Gary Haugen’s time for a conversation with bloggers Anne Jackson of www.flowerdust.net and Euphrony of www.inspiredtoaction.com. They each posted learnings, thoughts, and questions from this time with Gary. I am so grateful to Anne and Euphrony for giving us this priceless gift of their time and exposure to our work. If you don’t already, I hope you’ll enjoy visiting their blogs daily as I do, and contributing to the conversations they are stimulating.
The IJM Institute is now on Twitter - hope you’ll follow us! Username is:
ijminstitute
International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. IJM lawyers, investigators and aftercare professionals work with local governments to ensure victim rescue, to prosecute perpetrators and to strengthen the community and civic factors that promote functioning public justice systems.
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